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“What on Earth has gone on with Christmas tree collection this year?” We have been inundated this month with emails from you asking just that – as seemingly most streets in the ward had their Christmas tree collections missed for several weeks in a row.
For decades, Wandsworth Council has provided a service where used Christmas trees are collected for free from outside residential properties at the end of the festive season. Residents are given a two-week window during which they can leave their Christmas trees outside their property on their usual bin day. In our experience, the system works well, although every year there are inevitably some missed collections and some early or late putting-out of Christmas trees.
However, over the past month, we have received a stream of complaints from Northcote residents who have put their trees out for collection at the correct time, only for collections to be repeatedly missed. This has led to Christmas trees obstructing the pavements, making life especially difficult for those with buggies and mobility difficulties. It’s clear that the service has performed markedly worse this year than in the past.
Initially, the collection period was advertised from 3rd – 16th January. By 16th January, it was clear that most of Northcote had not received a single collection. The Council acknowledged this fact and extended its collection deadline to 23rd January; however, even after this date, parts of Northcote had still not received a collection (meaning those streets had been missed three weeks in a row).
After a lot of correspondence with Council officers, we have secured a commitment that the collection service will be extended until all trees are collected. We have also asked for a clear explanation of how so many streets in Northcote were missed repeatedly – particularly when other parts of the Borough seemed to have enjoyed a far better service. We’ll report back in a future update on this.
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