Lutterworth's tip reopens Thursday 3 September after four weeks shut, but on three days a week: Sundays and Mondays stay closed, with no date to return.

Lutterworth’s recycling and household waste site reopens on Thursday 3 September, four weeks after Leicestershire County Council shut it. It will not go back to its old timetable. The site will open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays only, and the county has given no date for restoring Sundays and Mondays.

The council confirmed the reopening dates on Friday 28 August. The site’s own page now reads: “REOPENING FROM Thursday 3 September. Open Thursdays, Fridays 9am-7pm, Saturdays 9am-5pm”, and lists the site as “Temporarily closed Sundays and Mondays”.

Two days gone, and a third of the hours

Before the closure, Moorbarns Lane opened five days a week. An archived copy of the same council page from 22 April shows the summer pattern: Monday 9am to 5pm, Thursday and Friday 9am to 7pm, Saturday and Sunday 9am to 5pm.

That is 44 hours a week. The temporary pattern is 28. The site loses 16 hours, a little over a third of its opening time, and its only Sunday.

It also loses its quietest day. The archived page advised that queues were “less likely on Mondays” at Lutterworth. Monday is one of the two days now gone.

Two week grids comparing Lutterworth recycling site opening hours. The normal week shows Monday 9am to 5pm, Thursday and Friday 9am to 7pm, Saturday and Sunday 9am to 5pm, totalling 44 hours. The temporary week from 3 September shows Thursday and Friday 9am to 7pm and Saturday 9am to 5pm, totalling 28 hours, with Sunday and Monday closed.
Graphic by Harborough News.

The county calls this “a phased reopening”, with Lutterworth and Oadby “operating on a temporary opening pattern”. Neither the news release nor the site page says how long the reduced week lasts.

One further change is already fixed in the calendar. The county’s opening days leaflet sets winter hours of 9am to 4pm from 1 October to 31 March at every site. So Lutterworth’s Thursday and Friday evenings disappear at the start of next month whatever happens to Sundays and Mondays.

The closure ran three weeks past the first promise

The site was not meant to be shut this long. When the county announced the closures on Thursday 6 August, it gave a specific date. Lutterworth would be “open Thursday 6 August, then closed until Thursday 13 August”.

It stayed shut for another three weeks after that.

The county gave two reasons in August. One was “unprecedented levels of demand across all sites in recent weeks, with many waste containers reaching capacity, and a shortage of drivers affecting the speed at which containers can be emptied”. The other was the state of the wider industry, with “delays at treatment facilities and reduced processing capacity”.

Councillor Adam Tilbury is the county’s cabinet member for waste. In the 28 August release he said: “There’s still pressure in the waste sector across the country, but our team has worked as quickly as possible to get to the point where we can reopen these sites for residents to use.”

Four sites were closed in August. Bottesford reopened on Thursday 27 August, and is now running Thursdays and Fridays only. Oadby reopened on Sunday 30 August, temporarily closed on Saturdays. Shepshed reopens on Friday 4 September. Lount, which was closed for refurbishment rather than pressure, reopened on Monday 31 August with a new ReHome Zone for usable household items.

What it means for you

If you have been storing waste in the garage since early August, Thursday is the day. Expect it to be busy.

If you normally go on a Sunday or a Monday, you need a different site. Two are open on both those days:

  • Whetstone, Enderby Road, Whetstone, LE8 6JL. Monday and Sunday 9am to 5pm, Thursday and Friday 9am to 7pm, Saturday 9am to 5pm. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday. It currently cannot take car batteries, fridges or large domestic appliances.
  • Kibworth, LE8 0EX. Monday and Sunday 9am to 5pm, Tuesday and Wednesday 9am to 7pm. Closed Thursday to Saturday. It currently cannot take fridges, large domestic appliances or plasterboard.

Market Harborough’s site on Riverside will not help on those days: it opens Thursday and Friday 9am to 7pm and Saturday 9am to 5pm, the same three days as Lutterworth. Between the three district sites and Whetstone, though, there is somewhere open every day of the week.

Whichever you use, the county’s rules are unchanged:

  • No vehicle over 3.5 tonnes gross weight, no trailer longer than three metres.
  • Vans, pick-ups and cars with trailers need a waste permit, as does anyone bringing asbestos, chemicals or liquid paint.
  • Pedestrian access is not permitted. You have to arrive in a vehicle.
  • Charges apply for hardcore, soil, plasterboard and flat glass, and payment is by card only.
  • Upholstered domestic seating is currently not accepted at any Leicestershire site. That covers sofas, armchairs, bean bags, futons, pouffes and stools.

Harborough District Council collects bulky items from the kerbside for a fee, which is the alternative for furniture. Our Market Harborough bin collection days page has the booking route, the garden waste charge and the full tip table.

What we could not confirm

The county has not published an end date for Lutterworth’s reduced week, or said what would bring Sundays and Mondays back. Neither the site page nor the 28 August news release answers it. We will update this story when a date is published.