Market Harborough Bin Days: Bank Holidays Change Nothing

Harborough District Council collects your bins fortnightly, alternating between the blue-lidded recycling bin and the black bin. The green garden waste bin goes out on the same day as the recycling, but only if you have paid the annual subscription.

Two things about this district are worth knowing before anything else.

• Bank holidays do not move your collection. The council’s published 2026 calendar runs an unbroken fortnightly cycle from January to November with no gap at Good Friday, Easter Monday, either May bank holiday or 31 August.
• Collection days across most of the district permanently swapped in November 2024, after Leicestershire County Council ordered the council to stop tipping at Cotesbach.

Everything below is taken from Harborough District Council’s own pages and from Leicestershire County Council, which runs the recycling and household waste sites.

Which bin, and what goes in it

The council gives every household three wheeled bins. (Harborough District Council)

Bin sizes vary with household size. The standard black bin is 180 litres, with a 140-litre slim bin for single or low-occupancy households and a 240-litre XL bin only for households of five or more, which the council verifies. Standard blue-lidded bins are 240 litres, with a 140-litre slim option. (Ordering household bins)

If you recycle more than one bin holds, you can ask for a second blue-lidded bin free of charge. Extra recycling can also be left beside the bin, provided it is in a cardboard box or a clear plastic bag and any cardboard is flat-packed. (Blue-lidded bin)

Batteries and lighters must never go in any wheeled bin. The council says they start fires inside the collection lorries.

How to find your day

Enter your postcode and pick your address on the council’s collection checker, which is run by its contractor FCC Environment. It returns your next recycling date, your next black bin date and the colour of calendar you are on. (Bin collection dates)

The printed calendars are grouped by colour rather than by place, so you need to know which one you are on before they are any use. The blue, yellow and rural calendars for 2026 are on the council’s bin collection calendars page. They currently run only to November 2026.

Whatever your day, the bin has to be at the edge of your property by 7am. The lorries carry equipment that records whether a bin was presented at the kerb during the collection period, so a late bin is logged as a late bin.

The November 2024 swap that moved most of the district

This is the change residents still get caught out by. From the week beginning 4 November 2024 the council swapped its Tuesday and Wednesday rounds. It did so because Leicestershire County Council issued it with a direction notice, a legal instruction to use a different tipping site. (Bin collection day change)

• Moved from Tuesday to Wednesday: Market Harborough, Great Bowden, Little Bowden and Lubenham.
• Moved from Wednesday to Tuesday: Lutterworth, Broughton Astley, Ashby Parva, Bitteswell, Catthorpe, Claybrooke Magna, Claybrooke Parva, Cotesbach, Frolesworth, Leire, Shawell, Sutton in the Elms, Swinford, Ullesthorpe and Walcote.
• Thursday and Friday collections did not change, and the rural round was excluded.

The consequence was that black bin waste stopped going to Cotesbach landfill and started going to the Coventry incinerator instead. The council’s own black bin page has not caught up: it still tells residents their waste goes to “Cotesbach landfill site”. (Black bin)

Bank holidays and Christmas

The council publishes no bank holiday notice at all, which leaves residents guessing. The evidence says collections run as normal.

• The 2026 calendars alternate week by week from January to November with no broken week anywhere, including the weeks containing Good Friday on 3 April, Easter Monday on 6 April, the May bank holidays and 31 August.
• The council’s own checker confirms it either side of the August bank holiday. A Broughton Astley address on the yellow calendar is down for its black bin on Tuesday 1 September, exactly a fortnight after its last recycling collection on Tuesday 25 August. A Great Glen address is down for Thursday 3 September. Neither slips a day.

Christmas is a different matter, and the council has not published anything usable. The calendars stop at November 2026, so December dates are not out. The only Christmas guidance on the council’s bin collection information page is six years old: it gives dates for December 2020 and January 2021, and even those contain obvious errors, telling blue calendar households their black bin will be emptied on “Thursday 24 December 2021”.

That stale note is still worth reading for the pattern it shows. In 2020 the only two days cancelled outright were Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, both of which fell on a Friday, with replacement dates given for each calendar. Bulky and clinical waste collections and bin deliveries stopped for the two weeks beginning 21 and 28 December.

We will update this page when the council publishes its 2026 Christmas arrangements.

Garden waste: £61, and nothing at all for three months

The green bin is a subscription service and it is not a full year. The council collects garden waste for nine months of the financial year: April to November, plus the following March. (Garden waste service)

• The subscription is £61 per bin, covering April 2026 to March 2027.
• There are no green bin collections in December, January or February.
• A new subscription can take up to seven days to become active.
• There is no sticker. The crews’ in-cab system shows which properties have paid.
• If you move within the district your subscription follows you. If you move out of the district there is no refund, and collections carry on at the address you left until the subscription year ends.

Apples, food waste including pumpkins, soil, turf, animal bedding and cardboard are not accepted in the green bin.

Bulky waste, and a price the council states two different ways

The council collects up to three large household items or 12 sacks in one visit. Booking is by phone only, on 01858 828282, and payment is taken in advance. There are no refunds for a cancelled collection. (Bulky waste collection)

The price is where it gets awkward. The council’s service pages state the charge as £48.36. (Large items of waste that can be collected) Its published fees schedule, under a 2026/27 heading, states “collection from domestic premises of bulky refuse” as £10.00. (Fees for our services) The two cannot both be the price for the same job. Ask what you are being charged when you book, because that is the only point at which anyone tells you.

Collections run Tuesday to Friday, between 7am and 5pm on the confirmed date. Items must be outside the front of the property by 7am, and crews will not enter a garage, shed or garden.

Fridges and freezers have been disrupted since April 2026. A fire at a national appliance processing plant cut disposal capacity across the country, Leicestershire included. The council says it is working with the county council on a limited booking system to restore collections. As of 30 August 2026 that notice is still the most recent update on the page.

Kitchen units, boilers, fireplaces, radiators, DIY waste, soil, rubble, sheds, fencing, bagged garden waste, carpet, underlay and commercial fridges cannot be collected at all.

Missed collections: you have seven days

The council will only collect a missed black or blue-lidded bin if you report it within seven days of the collection date. (Missed collections)

Before reporting, check three things:

• It was the right day for the bin you put out.
• The bin was at the kerb by 7am, unless you have an assisted collection.
• It is after 5pm. There is no fixed collection time and it can change week to week, so the council asks you to wait until 5pm and to check whether your neighbours’ bins have gone.

A bin reported as missed on the usual collection day is emptied within two working days. The council’s own two pages define that working week differently, one as Monday to Friday and the other as Tuesday to Friday, which matters if your collection is late in the week.

Crews will not lift a bin weighing over 100kg and will not return for it. Bins logged as “blocked access” are revisited, so leave the bin out.

Bin charges

Source: Fees for our services, Harborough District Council. If a bin was vandalised you need a police crime number to complete the repair form.

The tips: three sites, and four closed days each

Recycling and household waste sites are run by Leicestershire County Council, not the district. Three of the county’s 13 sites serve this district, and none of them is open all week. Market Harborough and Kibworth are closed on opposite days, which is the practical thing to know.

Source: Find a recycling and household waste site, Leicestershire County Council. The county says queues are less likely on Fridays at Market Harborough and on Wednesdays at Kibworth.

Lutterworth’s site reopens on Thursday 3 September 2026, after four weeks shut. It was one of several closed to cope with national pressure on the waste sector, and it comes back on a temporary pattern of three days a week rather than its usual five: Sundays and Mondays stay closed, with no date given for restoring them. (Leicestershire County Council, 28 August 2026) We have the detail in Lutterworth tip reopens Thursday on three days a week.

The rules are the same at all three sites:

• No vehicle over 3.5 tonnes gross weight, and 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.
• Vehicles are let in up to five minutes before closing, and everyone must be off site by closing time.

Business waste is not accepted at any of them. It goes to Whetstone Waste Transfer Station, subject to charges.

What changes next

Two food waste caddies are being delivered to every household in the district across August and September 2026, but weekly food waste collections do not start until 1 April 2027. That is the first day of the council’s new environmental services contract. We covered the seven-month gap and why the date moved in Harborough food caddies arrive now, collections wait to 2027.

The council took delivery of a new fleet in July 2026: 14 Dennis Eagle refuse lorries, including one 18-tonne rural vehicle, plus two Scarab road sweepers with a third due. (Harborough District Council, 21 July 2026)

Further ahead, Harborough District Council was itself due to disappear. The Government decided in July 2026 that from April 2028 two unitary councils would replace the ten existing councils across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, and bin collections would pass to whichever new authority covers your address. That decision was put under review on 7 September 2026 and the timetable is no longer fixed. We set out which parts of the district were to go where on our Market Harborough council tax bands page.

Also useful

• Parking in Market Harborough, including the free car parks
• Market Harborough council tax bands for 2026/27
• Market Harborough roadworks and travel, which is where closures that block a bin lorry show up first

Contact the council’s customer services team on 01858 828282 or at customer.services@harborough.gov.uk. Garden waste queries go to gwsubscriptions@harborough.gov.uk.