Abusive customers and thousands without bookings - how recycling centre booking system is working so far

The booking system, for all five of Shropshire Council's household recycling centres - at Craven Arms, Bridgnorth, Oswestry, Shrewsbury and Whitchurch, was introduced in November.

Details about how the system has worked so far were revealed by Councillor Ian Nellins, the authority's cabinet member with responsibility for waste management, in response to a question at this morning's meeting of full council.

The top lines are that more than 2,000 people turned up without bookings - and that measures are being introduced to stop repeat visits, with one "rogue van" visiting 15 times.

Rules limit people to 12 visits a year.

Councillor Nellins said that there had also been 20 abusive visitors recorded - mostly at the Oswestry and Whitchurch centres.

He added that the amount of waste being received was 25 per cent down, cutting costs for the council in recycling the material.

In total for November 20,423 people had booked to attend, but 2,245 turned up without bookings. Councillor Nellins said that the numbers were likely because people were still getting used to the requirement to book.

Only 123 bookings came from the Telford & Wrekin area.

'2,245 vehicles turned up that had not booked'

Responding to a question from Councillor Brian Williams, Councillor Nellins said: "Just to give the headlines of the data there were 20,423 bookings made in the month of November - from November 5.

"The residual tonnage was down by 25 per cent from the previous two years. This is possibly a spike but I remind people it is the processing of waste is what costs the council additional money so that is where savings can be made.

"There were 2,245 vehicles that turned up that had not booked. The number was quite significant in the first week but it has dropped significantly since then as people are now starting to get at the understanding of the booking procedures.

"The snow on the 19th had a major impact on the site usage as you would expect.

"We had one rogue van who has visited the site 15 times - apparently the system can allow that at the moment but that is being adapted and overriding that with the terms and conditions so that they cannot make as many future visits.

"The cars that made 25 to 20 visits we suspect are small businesses so we have agreed with Veolia to produce a protocol for dealing with this so that we can deter that as well.

"We have only had 123 bookings from Telford & Wrekin council area, and we had 20 abusive customers recorded - again this was probably down to the fact they were not aware of the new booking system and most of these people were disruptive and abusive were in the Whitchurch or Oswestry HRCs."