BIN collections should be back to normal “by the start of next week” following last week’s chaos caused by heavy snow in the district.

Thousands of households didn’t have their bins emptied last week due to the Beast from the East, which brought heavy snow and made many parts of the district inaccessible to Council refuse workers.

After a week of catching up on bin collections, Bradford Council has said it hopes to be back to a normal service by next week, but the additional cost will not be known until the end of the financial year.

A spokesperson for Bradford Council said: “We hope to have caught up with collections and be back to normal by the beginning of the week March 12.

“Any extra cost will come out of the overall budget and will not be accounted accurately until the end of the financial year.”

Some residents raised concerns about their bin collections after seeing their general household waste and recycling waste being collected together and loaded into the same wagon.

However, Councillors and Bradford Council have been quick to reassure residents that while both bins are being collected together, it does not mean recyclable waste will be being sent to landfill.

Councillor Martin Love (Green, Shipley) said: “Refuse workers are taking all the rubbish to the Materials Reclamation Facility in Bowling Back Lane to sort it.

“The recyclable items will be taken away for recycling and the rest of it will be sorted at the facility.

“Very little of Bradford’s litter actually ends up going to landfill anyway as we give our general waste to Associated Waste Management who pull out everything else that is recyclable and then the rest goes to be used as fuel.

“Only about seven or eight per cent of Bradford’s litter actually goes to landfill, in Bradford it has something we have worked hard to get down.”

Cllr Mike Pollard (Conservative, Baildon) added: “All the rubbish is going into one truck and then going to the facility to be separated.

“It is a bit more of a shamozzle than normal but it will not all be going to landfill.

“The Council is trying to do it all in one blitz following last week’s chaos to make sure people’s bins get collected.”

A Bradford Council spokesperson added: “All the waste collected in Bradford is sorted for recyclables whichever wagon is used so no recyclable waste will go to into landfill.”