Council worker says summer heatwave put bin crews' lives at risk

Flintshire council’s streetscene service manager Goddard warned that the summer heatwave endangered the safety of bin crews while the authority maintained three‑weekly residual waste collections. Councillors praised local residents for largely embracing the schedule and said it helped the council stay on target to meet its statutory recycling rate.

Goddard told the council that “We had maybe five or six operational challenges that all came at the same time in a perfect storm this summer. Unfortunately, the heatwave was one of them and it was a contributing factor. We do have to prioritise staff safety above all else.

My number one job every day is to make sure that everybody goes home safely and we take that really seriously within streetscene. That was only one of several contributing factors. That level of change is naturally going to cause a few bumps in the road, particularly with staff being asked to do a little bit more.

There were some staffing issues during that period too.” Councillors noted that the shift to three‑weekly black‑bin collection, once controversial, had become a positive factor, with Saltney councillor Richard Lloyd saying “Three-weekly was very controversial at the time it came in,” and “It’s quite clear to see now that the three-weekly black bin collection has been a good new factor. Recycling has improved at the kerbside.” The council also reported that it had reduced the amount of waste sent to landfill or Parc Adfer by 6,467.49 tonnes between 2024 and 2026, and that the improvement continued this year despite the summer problems.