Brown bin collections carry on in 41 areas of the city and finance teams prepare for guidance on business grants 

Details have been announced of the 41 areas of Stoke-on-Trent where brown bin collections will take place this week, as the second of a two-week sweep of garden waste collections is under way.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council crews will travel across the city, from Abbey Hulton to Weston Coyney, and will continue with collections on bank holiday Friday, 8 May. A full list of the areas being collected from each day is published on the council’s website – www.stoke.gov.uk/coronavirus/waste – and a list of specific streets being visited is continuing to be published 36 hours in advance of collections.

Council leader Abi Brown said: “Our crews got to all the areas of the city we aimed to get to last week. It was a huge effort from the whole team, and saw around 43,000 bins emptied from households across the city. I’d like to thank all of our crews for their continued hard work, and to thank households for their patience while we complete this work. Some days our crews had to return to a small number of streets to carry out mop-up collections, due to the volume of waste in bins being so high. Our crews also tipped off a lot more than usual because of the amount of waste collected. Now we are publishing a list of the areas we’ll be collecting from for the week ahead, so that residents can plan when to leave their bins out. This will depend on having enough bin crews to complete rounds, and if we are not able to get to any specific streets on the allocated day, we ask people to continue to leave their bin out and we will return. After the two-week sweep of collections is completed this week, we will review arrangements for the future.”

Meanwhile, council finance teams are preparing for further guidance from government on a new ‘top up’ small business grant fund. The government announced over the weekend that a new fund will be available for small businesses with ongoing fixed property-related costs. Information from the government so far has set out that this fund will be for businesses with fewer than 50 employees who can demonstrate that they have seen a significant drop in income due to the coronavirus restrictions, and that grants will be at three levels – £25,000, £10,000 and under £10,000.

Councillor Brown said: “We welcome this announcement. We have already administered more than £40m in government funding to small businesses and those in the retail, leisure and hospitality sector – funding that is making a huge difference to thousands of businesses across the city.

“We are awaiting further information from government as to how the top-up grants will be administered. We are putting processes in place so that when we have these details we can start to make businesses aware straight away.”