Household waste recycling centres

It has been agreed that:

• Alsager, Crewe, Macclesfield and Knutsford  HWRCs will remain open. 
• The mobile HWRC will be retained, and the service will be expanded to target 8 areas where residents are not within a 20-minute drive time of a HWRC site, or to areas where data indicates that incidents of fly tipping are at an increased level. 
• The booking system for visiting HWRCs at peak times – during weekends and bank holidays – will be retained to manage people’s waiting times and to encourage greater use of the sites during weekdays and later in the day. 
• The HWRCs will be open for an extra hour – until 6pm – on weekdays during the summer months. 
• Bollington, Poynton and Middlewich HWRCs , which are currently under an emergency closure to ensure essential cost savings can be made in 2024/25, will not reopen.

We want to deliver a service that enables residents to recycle and dispose of their waste responsibly but is also within the limits of what is affordable over the coming years. 

This is in the context of needing to reduce spending by £100 million over the next four years, while continuing to support those who need help the most across the borough.  

Forecasting for this year already shows that the financial pressure is rising further.

In Cheshire East, we currently provide one of the highest levels of  HWRC provision per 100,000 of the population in the country, and we provide the longest opening hours for our customers in comparison to most other councils.

We understand that the option of reducing the number of permanent HWRC sites was not supported through feedback from a public consultation held about the proposals earlier this year. However, keeping services as they are now is simply not affordable.

Each of our 7 household waste recycling centres needs investment to bring them up to modern standards to comply with new safety regulations – amounting to more than £1.2m in total.

This investment is in addition to the significant annual maintenance and running costs of these sites, which continue to rise.

The emergency arrangements for HWRCs that are currently in place will continue until a new contract for the provision of HWRCs is in place, which is anticipated to happen from 1 September 2025.