Preston City Council issue bin collection update

Wednesday, 14 October 2026 16:23

By Paul Faulkner

Preston residents are being urged to double check their bin collection days ahead of changes being introduced next week.

Preston City Council says its online address checker – which gives details of forthcoming waste pick-ups for every property – had not been fully updated when the authority announced last Thursday that 3,500 households would see their collection schedule change from 19th October.

It means that anybody who looked up their new collection arrangements in the wake of that announcement may initially have seen incorrect information about when their bins would be emptied.

The city council told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that the facility, accessed via its website, has now been amended and accurately reflects the changes that start on Monday – which will affect around 1 in 20 dwellings across more than 130 streets.

The authority is – as was already planned – making direct contact with those households and providing them with printed calendars.

As the LDRS revealed last week, the online checker was also originally indicating that some of the affected properties would have different bins emptied on different days within the fortnightly collection cycle – a scenario that would have undone a simplified system introduced back in April.

However, town hall chiefs have now clarified that no householder will see their collection days staggered. That means all addresses will continue to have all of their bins picked up on the same day across the collection period – alternating between general rubbish one week and recycling the next, with food waste removed weekly on the corresponding day.

A spokesperson for the city council apologised for any confusion caused and added: “If anyone [still] has collections showing [on the checker] that are not all on the same day, we encourage them to let us know so we can deal with any issues.”

The changes coming into force next week aim to rectify the remaining problems that resulted from the April overhaul, which was driven by the government-ordered introduction of weekly food waste collections nationwide.

However, in Preston, delays in the delivery of the new wagons needed to make the food pick-ups caused collection problems across the board in some areas of the city.