Refuse collection vehicle access
Case reference FOI2026/02208
Received 16 September 2026
Published 14 October 2026
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, could you please provide the following information from the last 12 months:
1. A list of roads or streets where standard refuse or recycling collection vehicles are currently unable, or instructed not, to travel for routine household collections.
1a. If time and cost limits allow, please also provide the same information for commercial waste collections carried out by the council or on its behalf.
2. Where recorded, the reason for each restriction, such as narrow roads, unsafe reversing, weight restrictions or lack of turning space.
3. Where recorded, how collections are instead carried out, such as using a smaller vehicle, crews collecting on foot, or residents using an agreed collection point.
4. Where recorded, the date on which the current access restriction or alternative collection arrangement began.
For clarity, I am only interested in ongoing or regular access restrictions, rather than one-off issues caused by roadworks, weather or temporary obstructions.
Please provide the information in spreadsheet format where possible. If some information is not held, please provide the available information and clearly state what is not held.
If the request would exceed the appropriate cost limit, please provide advice and assistance under Section 16 of the Act as to how it could be refined.
Response
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, could you please provide the following information from the last 12 months:
1. A list of roads or streets where standard refuse or recycling collection vehicles are currently unable, or instructed not, to travel for routine household collections.
1a. If time and cost limits allow, please also provide the same information for commercial waste collections carried out by the council or on its behalf.
Answer:
The information requested in Question 1a is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that 1480 files would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 5 minutes to check each file. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 123 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
However, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide an answer to Question 1. Please advise us if this is something you require.
2. Where recorded, the reason for each restriction, such as narrow roads, unsafe reversing, weight restrictions or lack of turning space.
Answer: This information is not held.
3. Where recorded, how collections are instead carried out, such as using a smaller vehicle, crews collecting on foot, or residents using an agreed collection point.
4. Where recorded, the date on which the current access restriction or alternative collection arrangement began.
For clarity, I am only interested in ongoing or regular access restrictions, rather than one-off issues caused by roadworks, weather or temporary obstructions.
Please provide the information in spreadsheet format where possible.
If some information is not held, please provide the available information and clearly state what is not held.
If the request would exceed the appropriate cost limit, please provide advice and assistance under Section 16 of the Act as to how it could be refined.
The information requested in Question 4 is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that 2665 files would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 5 minutes to check each file. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 222 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
However, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide a response to Question 3. Please advise us if this is something you require.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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