ePetition details

1. All future collections, including general waste, recycling and food (household rubbish) will be undertaken in an orderly manner and in accordance with NFDC’s collection dates conveyed to all residents.

2. NFDC will collect from all households on private roads, and will not expect those households to move their household rubbish elsewhere.

3. NFDC will provide suitable disposal units to all who find the current disposal units inaccessible such as those who may be disabled, or cannot cope with the current disposal units.

4. NFDC will collect all disposal units from locations which are secure from livestock.

5. NFDC will provide a breakdown of the budget and all costs of the new waste collection service which includes the considerable extra work as a result of unplanned logistics. This should include all staffing and other costs.

6. NFDC to provide full details of the environmental quality score of household rubbish collection prior to the implementation of the new waste collection service; the estimated environmental score of the proposed new collection service and the actual environmental score of the new service. We are particularly concerned because we have seen multiple lorries collecting household rubbish on the same day, when previously there was one.

7. NFDC will provide an assurance that householders’ council tax bills will not be increased as a result of the perceived debacle of the new waste collection scheme.

8. The Leader, the elected representative, the Chief Executive and The Director in charge of waste collection of NFDC shall attend an open meeting within two months of 28th August to address residents’ concerns and corrective action taken.

The Phase 1 roll-out of the new Recycling and Rubbish Collection Service, which started in Brockenhurst on 16 June 2025, is widely regarded by residents in our village as having been a badly-organised fiasco.

For many years, village residents enjoyed a service which, with occasional blips, provided everyone with the assurance that their rubbish would be collected and taken away without issues. In the past two months this has changed.

Waste continues to be uncollected on days designated by NFDC when Phase 1 of the roll-out was first announced.

In some cases, food waste has been uncollected for weeks in certain streets/tracks in the village, leading to food caddies becoming unhygienic as maggots fester in the decaying food.

The same situation applies to bottles and glassware: residents have been told the latter situation will continue for weeks until staff shortage issues are resolved.

When bins or food waste is collected, collections happen on random days which are not made clear to residents beforehand and don’t reflect the dates they were originally given by NFDC, leaving many to scrabble at the last minute to put their bins out.

This has led to situations where food caddies/bins are put out after a collection has occurred. In other cases, bins are left out for days at a time in the hope that, maybe, someone will collect them at some future point.

In parts of the village where Forest animals are able to roam freely, donkeys and ponies currently (and pigs, potentially, during the coming pannage season) have smashed food caddies open and eaten their contents, leaving streets strewn with rubbish and decaying food.

This includes the plastic bags the food waste is placed into, which raises serious concerns about animal welfare.

The rationale for the new waste collection system includes a greater commitment to the environment, yet we are seeing the use of multiple vehicles to collect our rubbish when previously there was one.

NFDC’s response to date has been to gaslight Brockenhurst residents.

Public statements have refused to accept responsibility for a poor roll-out of Phase 1. Claims have been made that the decline in the volume of complaints/calls made directly to the District Council “proves” that the service is improving.

News that Brockenhurst residents group together to make a single call on behalf of an entire street, sharing the contents of that conversation on WhatsApp, have been greeted with astonishment by some senior council officers.

Other residents have simply given up contacting the council, because they don’t think their concerns will listened to.

As for the food caddies, the District Council refused for weeks to listen to expert advice from the New Forest Commoners Defence Association and others that they were too flimsy. They declined to consider obvious solutions like allowing residents to keep caddies behind gates and cattle grids.

Statements which instructed us how to push up handles of the caddies to lock them implied that it was residents’ inability to master this simple technique which was causing donkeys to access the bins.

The result has been obvious for all to see.

The aim of the petition is for officers and District Council political leaders to explain what went wrong, how any mistakes made are being addressed and to draw a line under the mistakes of the past. We hope the District Council will consider our request with the seriousness it deserves.

This ePetition ran from 13/08/2025 to 24/09/2025 and has now finished.

64 people signed this ePetition.