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Survey shows 98% satisfaction rating with Buckinghamshire’s household recycling centres

| December 18, 2019
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An HRC collection bin. (Image supplied by Buckinghamshire County Council)

A new survey has shown that 98% of visitors to Buckinghamshire’s household recycling centres remain satisfied with the service they receive.

The survey suggests that satisfaction levels remain high despite changes to help the service reduce cost that were brought in on Monday 1st April 2019.

Buckinghamshire County Council introduced the changes as a way to make household recycling centres as cost-effective as possible at a time of unprecedented budgetary pressure to help prioritise essential council services for vulnerable residents.

The changes included :

  • The closure of the recycling centre at Bledlow Ridge.
  • The reduction of opening days at three of the other nine sites.
  • The introduction of charging for the disposal of non-household waste.

The survey was carried out during October 2019 and revealed that 98% of those who took part in the survey were either satisfied or very satisfied with the service they received. This figure is down only 1% since 2017.

However the proportion of those saying they were very satisfied has reduced from 60% to 45%.

Clive Harriss, Deputy Cabinet Member for Planning & Environment at Buckinghamshire County Council, said: ‘It was with great reluctance that we had to bring in a number of changes to our household recycling centre service, which has always been rated very highly by our residents.

Although it was necessary to make the changes in order to balance our budget, we did also make considerable efforts to ensure that the quality of the service remained high, and the experience of the average household recycling centre visitor was affected as little as possible.

I’m glad to say that, from the evidence of these survey results, we have achieved this aim. Though with some people having to make a small disposal payment for the first time, inevitably there has been a reduction in the proportion of visitors who reported that they are very satisfied with the service.

The results of the survey also showed that sites are easy to get to with three quarters of respondents saying it took them less than tn minutes to get to their local site.

It was also evident that the new charging system for non-household waste was widely understood with two thirds of the people bringing non-household waste knowing about the charges beforehand. 20% of those who responded to the survey had already paid for non-household waste disposal on a previous visit.

*Source of article : Press release from Buckinghamshire County Council.

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