A BOOKING system to bust lengthy queues at a recently reopened tip would be too complicated according to council bosses.

Essex County Council reopened 15 of their recycling centres last week having shut them due to coronavirus.

But queues at the Colchester Recycling Centre in Shrub End have peaked at up to an hour.

Labour councillors, including Colchester members Julie Young, Dave Harris and Lee Scordis had called for a booking system to be used so people would only arrive for their dedicated slots.

"Towns across Essex have seen enormous queues outside their recycling centres, with many roads being blocked after recycling centres were re-opened earlier this week," they said.

"All this time cars have their engines running causing damage to the environment.

"The council’s plan to appeal to people’s common sense was always bound to fail and in our opinion Essex County Council have tried to deny any responsibility over the issue by taking this route."

But County Hall's environment boss Simon Walsh (Con) said he was aware there had been long queues but insisted a booking system was not workable.

"We however anticipate that this will remain a short term issue whilst residents return to a more normal mode of life, and have disposed of the waste that have built up over the last eight weeks," he said.

"The many kerb-side waste collection services that were suspended are now also coming back online which will further alleviate these problems.

“We did carefully consider a booking system prior to the remobilisation.  The reasons for not progressing with a booking system were both operational and technical.

“Although the operation of a booking system can help with site queues it rarely eradicates them, unless access to the service is severely restricted. 

"Although booking systems can limit the number of authorised users coming to the sites, a number of unauthorised users will attempt to access the service which not only slows user throughput whilst checks are undertaken, but also increases the risk of on-site confrontation.”

He said it would also not be viable to limit the time authorised users spend on site.

“With users spending anything from five minutes to more than one hour on site unloading their waste a booking system will still lead to queues through the day,” he added.

“Where a booking system is used to minimise queues it will lead to significant restrictions in the number of users that can be accommodated in a day to accommodate the varying unloading times and ensure booking slots are met.  In the small number of areas where booking systems have been deployed sites have often had to limit their visitor numbers to less than 300 per day.

“On a normal busy weekend, centres will handle in excess of 20,000 visits a day. The development, testing and deployment of a system with the capacity to handle this would have significantly delayed the mobilisation of the service and a booking system will lead to significant restrictions in the number of users that can be accommodated.

“The approach we have adopted in Essex has ensured the maximum number of users can be accommodated per day on every site we have opened."

Mr Walsh urged anyone who could wait longer before visiting their recycling centres to do so.