As long as these collections were picked up this would be fine! Though I am not sure that this would be regular enough unless you were able to recycle more. Also could they not drive down the back of London Road (the service road between Malden Road and Lavender Avenue), as every week I have to wheel these bins out and its not a safe alleyway at night!

If new working patterns were instigated you'd probably have to do more than you do now, wheeling a bin down the alley may be the least of your worries, you may be asked to wheel your neighbours as well and provide lighting or put a reflective strip on your bins, as they attempt collection during the night

Thanks for the comments, interested to know on the assumption that you dont have to to anything different; whether or not having your waste collected at different times in the day to now would cause you problems?

What sort of times would you consider it to still be acceptable to collect waste ? Be it in he evenings or weekends ?

I assume this is to do with the article in the Guardian a while back about working until 10pm? I have young children who are in bed by 8pm, I certainly do not want loud vehicles going down my small road at that time of night, when families get to sit down for some quiet at the end of the day, especially in summer when the windows are open. Plus the amount of cars parked in our road after 5pm they'd be lucky to get down our road.

Our rubbish collections start at 6am. Do children get woken up then? Do parked cars stop the crews from collecting your rubbish then?

Any thoughts on weekend collections? Or other ways of saving £500k?

What about in line with the parking zones? People in my area have to park in bays from 08:00-18:30, which would be reasonable. This could include Saturdays but not Sundays. Outside of these times, the vans just wouldn't get through.

The difference with collecting rubbish at 9-10pm is most people/children are either already in bed or getting ready for bed, therefore their day is just ending. If they are awoken an hour after going to bed when they may already be in deep sleep, it us much worse than being woken up an hour before you're due to get up!
Also, how on earth do you expect to get the dustcarts in the residential streets after 5pm and St weekends? Do other councils do this and it works?

I am very happy with the service that I get from the dustmen, the crews that clear my rubbish are here every week like clockwork. There are a number of older people living in this road and the men always stop to say hello, and ask if we are ok. I dont like the idea of having my bin out late in the evening to be emptied because I live alone, and I wont be going out late to bring the bin back in. This would really worry me and some of my neighbours. If the bin was out late it could draw attention to people living on their own.

Between 6am and 8am there are as many parked cars as there would be after 5pm. We know that we would need to be careful went planning the order that the crews visit the roads in to account for roads that are difficult to access after a given time.

Other than parked cars, are there any other reasons why it would be difficult for vehicles to access residential roads after 5 or at the weekend?

A number of councils collect rubbish/ recycling after 5pm including Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Greenwich and Cardiff Councils and it seems to work for them. Plus a lot of European cities collect rubbish at nighttime.

The conversation is titled new working patterns. Does this mean you are presumably considering more than one option. What other patterns are being looked at other than working until late?

We are considering a number of options at present which include either extending the working day or extending the working week (to include a Saturday)

Most of the options involve reducing the number of vehicles we use, by using the ones we keep more. In reducing the numbers of vehicles it negates the need to make redundancies.

The options being considered are:

1 - Double Shifting the vehicles in 6 hour shifts per day (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) - 6 days a week

2 - Double shifting vehciles in an average 7.2 hours shifts (one in the morning and one in the afternoon/evening)- 5 days a week

3 - Working 9 hour days, 6 days a week. There are 2 variations on this theme.

The first two options would achieve a sustainable year on year £500k saving. The two options around 9 hour day working would generate a sustainable saving of between £185k and £240k.

What are your views on these particular options?

Its all very well stating these savings but what's the cost in human terms? I am sure a lot of the refuse collectors have families and do the job not because it is well paid, but because they want to work rather than sitting at home claiming benefits. If the Council start making drastic changes to their working patterns I'm sure they'll have something to say about it and the only ones that will suffer will be the residents, as crews work to rule and no bins get emptied. Do you really need to pretend to save money like this, surely just cancelling your 'added services' 9 month a year garden waste, the unsightly recycling centres, 'large/bulky household', food waste trial in my area..................
Also, looking at the shifts you are proposing, it looks like the refuse collectors will be working well into the night, I drive a 7.5t delivery van and its not worth us working later than 5:30pm because we can't get close to a lot of houses and even if we do we have to stop in the middle of the road!
Adding to amyharris' comments above, couldn't Sutton also adopt the European style of the big bins at the end of each road and do away with all the individual ones?

I reckon these binmen must get a fair bit of grief off people from time to time. How much worse/less safe will it be for them late at night?

Looking at these shift patterns most seem to be for 6 days a week, if youre going to do that surely a 9 hour day would be most appealing for staff and residents, no 10pm finishes?

residents will not want dustcarts in quiet suburban streets in the late evening waking their children ,access to tight roads will also cause problems in the dark,and many bin chambers in blocks of flats have poor or no lighting.at present the work is no doubt done by breaking health and safety rules if bin men stick to these H+S rules very little waste will be collected.boroughs that operate evening shifts (i.e cardiff) are big cities not suburbs.

I understand that there are parked cars between 06:00am and 08:00am but the difference between this time and 17:00 is vast. The roads may well have parked cars in the morning but from 17:00 there is more traffic in residential roads due to people returning from work, picking children up from clubs etc. I am sure that abuse of staff would increase if drivers after a long day at work returned to their road and had to sit behind a dustcart as there was no where for it to move over. I would not want to listen to the noise of a dustcart when I have settled down for the evening. What about the staff, are they happy to work such hours, or are their opinions not considered?

6 hour shifts, both am and pm, 6 days a week would appear to make the most sense. I live in a small road and the parking situation doesn't seem to effect the dust cart access although from the other comments, it clearly does for some. Our collection is usually around 6am and this isn't a problem so I would suggest 6am-2pm and then 2pm-8pm when most people (including my children) are going/are in bed.

I support option 1. It is very hard to argue that the change in collection times is really going to impact significantly on resident's lives and the saving is very impressive.

Working 6 hours a day for 6 days a week would mean that staff lose their weekends, lets not forget that these are low paid staff who work in all weathers and in an unpleasant environment. It is a physically challenging job and their should be a work/life balance.
Its interesting that the Tax alliance this week printed details of Sutton's top earners.....£1,200,000 between 8 members of staff, with some of them receiving pay increases while other staff have received no pay increase. What about consistency and "We are all in this together"?????

I agree with Fiadh, these guys do a good job they deserve a life work balance, why is it always the lowest paid workers who suffer the most? If it aint broke dont fix it.
I see from another thread that the garden waste service costs over £900,000? Cut that in half you get the same savings as your pattern changes. Stop it all together even if only temporarily youve got your savings. Combine this reduction with other suggestions ive read youve got your savings.

I absolutely agree with Fiadh and robbyk - the savings MUST be able to come from elsewhere.

The fact that we pay one of the highest premiums in London in our taxes and yet see very little extra benefit is extremely worrying.

Cutting garden collections would be a start; as would reducing the number of agency staff used - we always see street sweepers (sorry if tht is not the proper name) who are agency employed in our street!

I would think seriously before you try to change working conditions for these men and women so drastically - we'd end up like Birmingham if the workeds in Unison went on strike

and consider better ways of doing things across other areas;- Perhaps small charges on everything for everyone rather than huge cost on somethings for those who work only...