Waste issues are plaguing one area of Bristol, with household rubbish collections being missed and fly tips taking months to be cleared. Andrei, who works at a garage on Robert Street in BS5, said it had taken half a year for Bristol Waste to clear a huge pile of tipped rubbish outside his workplace.
Even when they did clear it up earlier in March, six months after workers at the garage first reported the mess, they left behind several bags of waste that were still festering on the side of the road earlier this week.
At one point the pile of rubbish was so bad that it covered the garage’s sign advertising MOT services. Andrei said he and his colleagues would have cleared more of it themselves but they didn’t have space in their own bin.
A pile of waste on Robert Street, after it had been ‘cleaned up'(Image: Bristol Live)
“We’re trying to manage the street because it looks like nobody cares about it,” he said.
When Andrei started working at the garage, three years ago, the street was clean. The problem of dumped waste had gotten ‘so much worse’ over the last year, he said.
The problem is not just the piles of rubbish, but what they attract. “You don’t want to know,” said Andrei when asked about the size and number of rats he had seen recently.
The vermin drawn to the mess have even occasionally chewed through wiring in customer cars which are left in front of the garage.
Andrei was at pains to stress he didn’t have an issue with hardworking rubbish collectors; his anger was directed at the slow response of Bristol City Council and Bristol Waste.
A huge fly tip in a car park just off Stapleton Road(Image: Bristol Live)
“We know it’s not easy but it can’t take that long to clean it up,” he said. “This cannot happen.”
The problem is not confined to the road in front of Andrei’s garage. On nearby Stapleton Road and streets which run off it, piles of rubbish are a common sight.
About a mile south, residents of Gregory Street became used to overflowing bins of their own when their waste was not collected for over a month between mid-April and mid-May. Again, the issue took a long time to resolve despite repeated appeals to the council.
“We’ve tried contacting the council; consistently they’ve told us they’d come and consistently they’ve failed to show up and the rest of our street have (sic) grown tired of the neglect,” local man Umu said.
A Bristol Waste van on Stapleton Road(Image: Bristol Live)
BS5 is not the only area of the city to have experienced problems with the council-owned waste collection service in recent months.
In Lawrence Weston, residents have regularly reported issues with waste piling up outside council flats when people move out of their properties. BCC has not been able to agree on a long-term solution with its own waste company on how to manage the problem.
Meanwhile, problems continue in St Pauls where residents have waged a years-long campaign to get a proper management plan in place for the communal bins which routinely overflow and become fly-tips in the area. Those issues are ongoing despite a new plan supposedly being put in place at the start of 2026.
Bristol Waste did not respond to questions about specific issues that may be affecting BS5, or why it had taken so long to partially clear the mess on Robert Street.
Piles of waste are a common sight on Stapleton Road and surrounding streets(Image: Bristol Live)
A spokesperson said the service was performing above its target when it came to household collections.
“Our ‘right first time’ percentage for collections over the last 12 weeks was 99.4%,” the spokesperson said. “This is 1.4% over our target, of 98%, as agreed with our strategic client and owner Bristol City Council.”
“Our hardworking teams do an incredible job in helping to make Bristol safer, cleaner and more sustainable. They collect recycling and waste for everyone in the city in all weathers.”
“Whilst we know that we’re going above our targets, we also recognise that every delayed collection is a household who have been impacted. We’re working extremely hard to provide a service that the city can be proud of as well as to maintain and build on Bristol’s top place for recycling rates amongst English core cities.”
Bristol City Council did not respond to a request for comment.