A Pre-booking system has been introduced at a Household Waste and Recycling Centre in Southampton.

Residents using the HWRC in Millbrook will need to pre-book scheduled time slots to dispose of unwanted waste and bulky items following the decision to join Hampshire County Council’s HWRC pre-booking scheme on Saturday July 25.

The move will ensure that residents can guarantee entry to the Millbrook site, even at peak times, while providing the council a means of limiting queueing traffic, and bookings can be made quickly and easily on Hampshire County Council’s website.

Bookings for the July 25 onwards can be made starting tomorrow and residents can book up to three slots per week, with no more than two slots on the same day.

Time slots can be booked a maximum of seven days in advance and need to be made a minimum of 48 hours ahead of any planned visit, but face masks need to be warn on site at all times.

A total of 15 booking slots will be available per half hour and due to a one in one out system is in place so timings may not be exact as vehicles will need to exit the site before entry can be allowed for other vehicles.

Cabinet Member for Green City & Place, Councillor Steve Leggett, said: “Introducing a booking system for entry to the Millbrook HWRC is a step we’re taking to manage traffic flow and to reduce the cost associated with the increasing amount of waste that’s being disposed of at the site by visitors from outside of the city.

“As part of our Green City plans we are encouraging people to reduce, re-use and recycle as much as possible. As a council, we need to ensure that we’re managing the cost of disposing of waste that cannot be re-used or recycled.”

Site users with coronavirus symptoms are not allowed to visit the site until seven days after the end of symptoms, while people living in a household where others have symptoms should not visit the site for 14 days from the day the first person in the household became ill.