The following information has been released today from Bury Council.

Bury Council has being working hard over the last 24 hours to provide help and support to vulnerable residents and ensure that local residents stay safe whilst the weather remains icy, snowy and cold.

Information provided by the Met Office to Bury Council indicates that conditions are set to get worse over night with heavy snow fall is predicted. The council will continue to monitor developments and plans are being altered as necessary as the day progresses.

Parents concerned about school closures tomorrow should listen for announcements on local radio, or check the Council’s website.

Residents are also being advised during the bad weather to help and support elderly or vulnerable friends, neighbours or relatives.

The information below provides an update on the work front line staff have been undertaking over the last twenty four hours to ensure that service disruption remains at a minimal level.

Throughout today Street Care teams are focusing on gritting activities.. Gritters were sent out last night to grit roads across the borough and work continues today to ensure that main roads are gritted. The council is also trying to grit as many residential streets as possible using both vehicles and hand gritting teams, in particular to help refuse and recycling collection vehicles access these areas and ensure that waste in residents’ bins is collected as scheduled..

Every effort is being made to replenish grit bins throughout the borough and in addition we are dropping-off piles of grit at the roadside for people to help themselves to, particularly in the north of the borough.

Yesterday approximately half of the scheduled rubbish and recycling collections were able to take place despite the difficult conditions. Conditions today are treacherous in parts but all the crews left the depot this morning at the normal time to try and complete what they can of today’s scheduled collections. It is important that residents leave their bins out for collection throughout the day as there may be some delays to the service.

Collection crews are maintaining a record of streets not serviced and plans are being put into place for extra rubbish and recycling collections to take place on Saturday to clear the backlog.

Residents whose rubbish and recycling has not been collected as scheduled are advised as follows:

For brown bin collections residents are asked to return their bin to their property and put it out at their next scheduled brown bin collection day. As garden waste is at a minimum at this time of year it is anticipated that this will not cause too many problems.
For blue bins, grey bins and paper bag collections the council is hoping to return on Saturday morning to the locations where bins/bags should have been collected on earlier in the week. Missed bins/bags must be put out for collection by 7am and these must be accessible to the collection crews. Residents are asked, therefore, not to park vehicles where they may cause an obstruction. Any residents that consider they have sufficient capacity in their bins to wait until their next scheduled collection day are advised to return their bins and/or bags to their property until then.

Alternatively, residents can take recyclables and paper/card to their local recycling centre. For more information about the location of these sites please log on to www.bury.gov.uk/recyclingcentres. Space can also be conserved in blue bins by squashing plastic bottles and drinks cans.

Residents need to be aware that these arrangements are dependent on suitable weather conditions and, therefore may be subject to change.