Spelthorne ran every bank holiday Monday round in 2026, only Christmas moves. Garden waste is £80, bulky waste £90, and you get one working day to report a miss

Spelthorne Borough Council’s rubbish and recycling hub links out to more than twenty child pages, and the two things people most often want are on none of them: whether the lorries come on a bank holiday, and how long you actually have to report a missed bin.

This page answers both, and the rest of the cluster, for Staines-upon-Thames, Ashford, Sunbury, Shepperton, Stanwell and Laleham. Every figure was checked against Spelthorne’s own pages, Surrey County Council’s and the collection contractor’s on 1 September 2026.

The bins, and what goes in each

Spelthorne runs two fortnightly wheelie bins and one weekly kerbside bundle:

What Container How often
Rubbish Dark green wheelie bin Every two weeks
Recycling Light green wheelie bin Every two weeks
Food waste Green outdoor caddy Every week
Textiles and small electricals Tied carrier bags beside the caddy Every week
Garden waste Separate wheelie bin, paid subscription Every two weeks

Rubbish and recycling alternate, so in any given week one of the two green bins goes out and the caddy goes out regardless. Everything must be at the kerb by 6am, handles facing the road, and the council asks you to allow until 2pm before assuming it has been missed. That is on the missed bin page.

Find your own collection day on the council’s lookup. It takes a postcode and a house number and returns your next two dates.

The food caddy has two colours and the council uses both

The food waste page tells you to put “your green caddy” out and then, four lines later, to line “your grey caddy”. Both are correct and neither is explained. The grey one is the small kitchen caddy that lives indoors. The green one is the larger lidded bin that goes to the kerb.

The rule that catches people is the next line: food waste has to be bagged and tied. Spelthorne will not take it loose. A reused bread or vegetable bag is fine, or newspaper if the waste is fully wrapped.

Bank holidays: Spelthorne does not move the bins

This is the question the council’s website does not answer anywhere, so we checked it against the council’s own collection records instead.

Using Spelthorne’s collection lookup for a Monday-round address in Ashford, all four 2026 bank holiday Mondays are recorded as having been served on the day itself, each marked “Collection completed”:

  • Monday 6 April 2026, Easter Monday: recycling
  • Monday 4 May 2026: recycling
  • Monday 25 May 2026: rubbish
  • Monday 31 August 2026: rubbish

The council’s 2026 collection calendar agrees. It is a Monday-to-Friday grid with no Saturday column anywhere, and it prints every bank holiday Monday as an ordinary collection day.

So if your bin day falls on a bank holiday in Spelthorne, put the bin out as normal.

Christmas is the exception, and the dates are not published yet

Christmas is the only point in the year when Spelthorne rounds move, and the calendar says so in its own footnote: changes “will be published separately in the winter edition of the Bulletin and on our website”.

The council’s Christmas changes page is still showing last Christmas. Those dates are worth reading anyway, because they show the shape of the disruption: the collection lookup confirms that in December 2025 the Monday 22 December round ran normally, the Monday 29 December recycling slid to Tuesday 30 December, the Monday 5 January round slid to Tuesday 6 January, and everything was back to normal by Monday 12 January.

The pattern is a one-day slip that then works its way through the whole week, with a Saturday catch-up at the end. Christmas Day 2026 falls on a Friday, so Friday rounds are the ones to watch this year. We will update this page when Spelthorne publishes the 2026/27 dates.

Garden waste costs £80, and the bin is extra

Garden waste is a paid subscription, and the council’s page prices it in four separate ways:

  • £80 a year for collections from April 2026 to March 2027
  • £35 one-off for the bin itself, on top of the subscription
  • £45 a year per bin for a second bin, plus another £35 for that bin
  • £55 a year for a garden waste sack instead of a bin

There is a limit of three bins per property. Collections are fortnightly, and the service shuts down between Christmas and the end of January, so you are paying for roughly eleven months of collections. Branches have to be no thicker than 7cm, and soil, turf, timber and flower pots are all refused.

Spelthorne also says you can share a subscription with a neighbour, which is unusual and worth knowing if you only fill a bin a few times a year. Everything collected goes to Trumps Farm at Chertsey to be composted.

Bulky waste: £90, and the council does not collect it

Spelthorne does not run a bulky waste service of its own. It contracts the job to Kingston Community Furniture, part of the charity Staywell, which collects Monday to Saturday.

The prices on KCF’s own page for Spelthorne are:

  • £90 for 1 to 5 items
  • £125 for 6 to 8 items
  • more than 8 items, or a house clearance, is quoted individually

The council’s page words the second band as “£125 including vat 1-8 items”, which reads as though £125 covers any collection up to eight items. KCF’s own price guide puts £125 in a 6-to-8 band. Go by the operator’s figure, and it is worth grouping items so you land at five rather than six.

The council adds that anyone on income support or pension credit may be eligible for a £10 discount. KCF’s page does not mention it, so ask when you book.

KCF will take washing machines, fridges (not American fridge freezers), wardrobes, tables, sofas, beds and mattresses, working or broken. It will not take garden waste, rubble, hazardous waste, kitchen cabinets, windows, baths, pianos, or fixtures and fittings. Book on 020 8942 5500 or through the online enquiry form.

Missed collection: you get one working day

Spelthorne’s reporting window is tighter than most. Every one of its waste pages says the same thing: contact the council within one working day.

The council will only come back if the bin was at the kerb by 6am, the lid was shut and the contents were right. Otherwise you wait for the next scheduled collection or take the waste to Shepperton yourself. Report it through the same lookup form used for collection days.

One trap: the missed bin page still links to a 2023 collection calendar as the way to check whether it was your day. The current one is linked from the rubbish and recycling hub. Use the postcode lookup instead of either.

If there is no able-bodied person over 14 living at the address, and no family member, neighbour or carer available to help, you can apply for an assisted collection where the crew comes onto the property. The council may ask for a doctor’s note and a site visit.

What changed in your recycling bin on 31 March 2026

Under the government’s Simpler Recycling reforms, Spelthorne added seven materials to the light green bin from 31 March 2026. The council confirmed no new bins and no change to collection days. The additions are:

  • drink and plant milk cartons, clean and empty
  • empty aerosol cans
  • foil, clean and scrunched into a ball at least the size of a tennis ball
  • foil trays, clean
  • non-black plastic plant pots, clean
  • squeezy metal tubes, such as tomato puree
  • squeezy plastic tubes, such as toothpaste

Those sit alongside glass, paper and card, cans and tins, and plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays. Everything goes in loose, never in a bag.

Still refused, per the recycling page: carrier bags and bin liners, food, crisp packets and sweet wrappers, plastic film, pizza and takeaway boxes, polystyrene, and hard plastics such as toys and coat hangers. Dry cardboard can be left folded beside the bin, but not if it is raining.

Note that the council’s Simpler Recycling page still lists cartons as an accepted item while its main recycling page still lists “drinks cartons (Tetrapaks)” under “No thanks”. The Simpler Recycling page is the newer of the two, last modified 26 March 2026 against 25 November 2025.

Textiles and small electricals go out every week

Both are collected weekly beside the food caddy, and both have conditions that get bags left behind:

  • Textiles go in clear plastic or carrier bags, tied, clean and dry, with footwear in pairs. Holes and stains are fine. Duvets, pillows, carpets, rugs, coat hangers and balls of wool are not.
  • Small electricals go in a tied standard carrier bag, with batteries and bulbs removed but plugs and cables left on. If it does not fit in the bag, it is not collected, which rules out printers and large kitchen appliances.

Shepperton tip: no booking, but bring proof of address

The nearest recycling centre is Shepperton Community Recycling Centre, Charlton Lane, Shepperton, TW17 8QA, run by Surrey County Council and operated by SUEZ.

  • Monday to Friday: 8am to 4pm
  • Saturday and Sunday: 9am to 4pm
  • Bank holidays: normal hours, including Easter
  • Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve: closes at 2pm
  • Closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day

There is no booking system. On your first visit you need proof of address, a driving licence, this year’s council tax bill, a recent utility bill or a Surrey bus pass, and staff then give you a Surrey resident sticker for the windscreen for later visits.

Two rules catch people out. Shepperton is not one of the four Surrey sites that admit pedestrians, so you have to arrive in a vehicle. And a van, pickup, camper van or anything towing a trailer needs a van permit, which costs £10 a year, is limited to 12 visits and is issued one per household.

Shepperton is one of nine Surrey sites that take construction and DIY waste, and one of only three in the county that take asbestos. Free limits on rubble, plasterboard, tiles and similar are two 50-litre bags, or one item up to 200x75cm, or one sheet of plasterboard, and no more than once every seven days. Above that you are charged.

Full details: Shepperton CRC, who can use a CRC, van permits. Note that Spelthorne’s own recycling centre page still points at an old Surrey address that now redirects, and gives a different phone number (01932 782 792) from the one Surrey publishes (01932 733355).

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