New opening hours at West Lothian's five Community Recycling Centres

New opening hours will be in place at West Lothian's five Community Recycling Centres (CRCs) in September.

In brief:

• The new hours will enable the council to retain all five CRC sites, with at least two sites open each day between 10am and 6pm - which remains significantly more than some other neighbouring council areas.
• As weekends are the most popular days to visit, all five CRCs will be open every Saturday and Sunday.                                                                          

• A booking system will also be in place in advance of the changes to opening times and householders will be able to book a slot on the council's website (please note that the system is not yet available). For those that cannot book online, customers will also be able to make bookings via the Customer Contact Centre. Bookings for all visits will be made available one week in advance of the new hours being implemented. A similar system is already in place in Falkirk and Edinburgh.

• Please remember that CRCs are only licensed to accept domestic household waste and cannot accept commercial waste. Commercial operators are responsible for taking their waste to a commercial Recycling Centre.

Why are these changes being made?

The changes were part of  a number of measures that the council had to make in order to balance its budget. The council needs to meet a £43.4 million budget gap over the next five years caused by the Scottish Government's funding grant not being enough to meet increasing costs and demand for services. The council receives 80% of its budget from the Scottish Government.

Executive councillor for the Environment  and Sustainability Tom Conn: "By reducing opening hours we are able to ensure that our limited budget is used to keep all five CRCs in West Lothian open, and we do not have to consider other possible options, such as the closure of any sites. West Lothian will continue to have more CRCs than other local councils, especially when you compare us against councils of a similar size and population."

"In Falkirk, for example, a similar council to West Lothian in terms of population size, there are two CRCs and this has been the case for some time. Both are also open part time and both have moved to an online booking system.  I believe this highlights that this isn't a decision that West Lothian faces alone. All councils face extremely tough decisions in order that we can balance our budgets. We simply cannot continue to deliver the same level of service with the levels of funding available to us.

"It is not the case that councils want to cut any of our services; but we have to work with the budgets we have and unless there is more funding, we are forced to make extremely tough decisions.

"The introduction of a booking system has several benefits for customers who want guaranteed access, with less queues to enable a quick turnaround on their visit. The majority of our neighbouring councils already have booking systems in place.

He added: "The previous changes to opening hours in 2019 did not lead to a significant rise in fly-tipping and that is because  the vast majority of fly tipping in West Lothian, around 80%, is commercial in nature and that has always been an issue. Law-abiding households don't dump their waste illegally.

"These changes impact on local residents, not commercial operators and all householders will still have access to a CRC, 7 days a week, so there is no excuse for illegal dumping."

Opening Times from September 2023