PEOPLE across Hampshire will be limited to one trip to a Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) per week as a new booking system comes into force this month.

In response to long queues and disruption caused to nearby businesses, Hampshire County Council have been forced to introduce a booking system to limit the number of people queuing at any one time.

As part of these measures, bookings will be limited to one slot per household per week, with over 30,000 such slots being made available across the county.

It will be introduced at Basingstoke's Wade Road site, Andover's Scott Close facility and the Hartley Wintney HWRC off Springwell Lane, plus all other sites across Hampshire, from Monday, June 15.

Other changes to be introduced from that day include reverting opening hours back to the regular summer hours: 9am-6pm, seven days a week.

Councillor Rob Humby, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Economy, Transport and Environment at Hampshire County Council, said: “The new Covid-safe working requirements inevitably mean capacity at all of our HWRCs is reduced.

"Although we have the largest HWRC network in the country, we haven’t seen a decline in the numbers of people visiting the HWRCs in the weeks since they reopened.

"Unfortunately, despite road markings and signs that we had put in place to help manage the traffic, the level of queuing at many sites is so significant that it is causing issues with local residents, local businesses and, in some cases, risking the safety of others on the roads."

Users of the tips will be able to book a 30-minute time slot up to 48 hours in advance. This can be done online or over the phone, and you will need provide your name, car registration number and an email address if booking online.

HCC hope that this will improve the traffic chaos that has been seen at tips across the county since they reopened on May 11, with Cllr Humby saying the queues have caused disruption to businesses near to their sites.

“Once the booking system is in place, we will be able to manage the number of vehicles coming to HWRCs at all times, so should see an end to this unacceptable level of traffic queuing," Cllr Humby continued.

"We’ll also have confidence that waste vehicles will be able to enter HWRCs to service the bins without getting stuck in traffic which means we can keep the sites open for longer each day.”

The council had previously come under criticism for not introducing a booking system sooner.

Cllr Humby said that it had been "under consideration all along", and that "the costs, operational requirements, timeliness and effectiveness of any system clearly need to be weighed up against the demands for re-opening sites quickly to meet Government and public expectations".

He continued: "In making decisions on the reopening of Hampshire HWRCs (which is the largest network in England) in May we considered a number of elements which would impact on both when sites could be re-opened and on waiting times for people.

"The new social distancing measures and covid-safe working requirements inevitably means capacity at sites is significantly reduced, and while we anticipated demand would be high to start with, we expected demand would fall to a more manageable level after the initial re-opening.

"To help manage this, we advised residents to visit an HWRC only if it was essential and put traffic management measures in place.

"These traffic management measures include a cut off point for queuing, and additional road markings or signage to help orderly and manageable queuing, all of which were put in place quickly and effectively to enable sites to be opened as soon as reasonably practical after the Government’s change of travel advice, and ahead of the formal changes being enacted in Parliament.

"Unfortunately, despite this, increased opening hours, and our clear messages to residents to consider delaying visits to HWRCs if they could safely store waste at home at the same time as making use of kerbside collection services provided by district and borough councils, we have not seen a reduction in demand and queuing, and therefore we now need to introduce a pre-booking system.”

Previously, opening hours had been extended to allow for more cars to enter the tips each day. However, this did not reduce traffic in the way that the council wished.