South Lanarkshire set to introduce appointments for all household waste recycling centres
The booking system is set to be rolled out to five more centres after reducing queue times and traffic issues at Carluke over the past two years
An appointment booking system is set to be rolled out across all six of South Lanarkshire’s household waste recycling centres.
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Residents will be asked to reserve a slot to visit the facilities at Blantyre, Larkhall, Strathaven, East Kilbride and Rutherglen from August, under proposals which will be presented to councillors at Tuesday’s meeting of the community and enterprise resources committee.
It follows the same system having been in place at the Carluke centre for the past two years, with officials saying it has reduced waiting times and traffic queues and now wishing to effect similar improvements at the council’s other five sites.
The pilot booking project was introduced at Carluke in February 2022, aiming to reduce waiting times and the resultant long traffic queues “impacting on businesses” in Castlehill industrial estate; as well as preventing unauthorised site use by commercial traders and residents of other local authorities – and reducing “incidences of verbal and physical abuse being experienced by site staff”.
A report for councillors notes: “Although residents were initially sceptical about the requirement to book before visiting the site, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive; evidence demonstrates that the system has been well received with high customer satisfaction rates being reported by users.
“Several benefits were identified, including ability to manage service demand for the site throughout the day, reduction in the number of unplanned site closures due to skip changeovers [as] these can now be scheduled due to coincide with quieter periods, improved relations with local businesses, [and] significant reduction in queuing and in engine idling and air pollution.”
Now councillors are now being asked to approve its rollout to South Lanarkshire’s other five waste facilities to address similar issues around queues, road safety and impact on neighbouring businesses.
The report states: “The service continues to receive complaints about queuing traffic at the other household waste recycling centres; the highest number relate to East Kilbride, Blantyre and Rutherglen.
“Residents regularly complain about queue lengths at peak times, businesses complain that the queues prevent customers visiting their premises, and roads officers have raised concerns on several occasions about the impact that queuing traffic has on road safety at these locations.”
The report notes that the same issues at Carluke have now been resolved “because the number of visitors and vehicles is spread throughout the working day”.
It adds: “Shorter queues at the sites will benefit visitors and local businesses [through] quick turnaround times and shorter queues for visitors; it will also improve perceptions about road safety in the areas where the sites are located.”
Should councillors approve expansion of the booking system across South Lanarkshire, an awareness campaign will take place from mid-July ahead of the new system coming into operation on August 12.
Approval would make South Lanarkshire the ninth council in Scotland to introduce a booking system for accessing its waste centres, and officials say it is also supported by site operators Biffa as it will allow them to “manage demand, plan downtime and provide a better service to users”.
Council officials say more than 27,000 bookings were made in the first six months of the appointments system at Carluke; it was made permanent in October 2022, with nearly 60,000 visits then being arranged during 2023-2024.
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