Cheltenham Bin Collection Days: Christmas 2026 Dates Set

Cheltenham Borough Council will tell you your next collection date once you type in a postcode. It will not tell you that Christmas moves your bins earlier, not later, that the town has had no recycling centre of its own since January 2025, or that nobody in the borough can currently get rid of a fridge.

This page pulls the whole cluster together. Every figure was checked on 1 September 2026 against the council’s own pages, the county council’s, and the formal decision records, each linked next to the fact it supports.

Bank holidays push everything a day later

After a bank holiday, Cheltenham slides the whole week one day back and adds a Saturday round. That is what happened at the August bank holiday just gone (Cheltenham Borough Council, bank holiday waste and recycling collection):

Normal collections resume on Monday 7 September 2026.

One detail on that page is worth more than the table. In a catch-up week, crews start earlier: “in some areas refuse and recycling collections take place as early as 6am so please make sure your bins are out at that time”. The rest of the year the deadline is 7am. If you put your bin out at 6.55am in a catch-up week you may already have missed it.

Christmas 2026 moves collections earlier

This is the part almost everyone gets wrong, because the bank holiday rule is the opposite way round. Over Christmas the council pulls rounds forward, so a Monday round happens on the Saturday before. The council has already published the dates for this December, on the same page:

Normal collections resume on Monday 4 January 2027.

Two things follow from that table. Monday and Tuesday households lose up to two days of notice, so a bin left out on the usual Monday morning will already be two days late. And Monday 28 December is a bank holiday on which Cheltenham collects as normal, which breaks the day-later rule the rest of the year runs on.

One caveat, and it is the council’s, not ours. Directly beneath that table the same page says “Christmas and New Year 2026/27 collection changes will be confirmed and published later in the year”. The table above it gives 2026 and 2027 dates whose weekdays all check out. We have published it because it is the only version the council has issued, but it is worth looking again in November in case anything moves.

Which container, and how often

Cheltenham runs a kerbside sort service, so your recycling is not one mixed bin. It is three green boxes and a bag, and they have to be sorted before the crew arrives. Unsorted recycling will not be collected, unless you only have one box.

• Green wheelie bin: non-recyclable rubbish, every two weeks (general waste).
• Green box one: plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, tins, cans, foil, empty aerosols and Tetra Pak cartons, every two weeks.
• Green box two: paper, newspapers and magazines, every two weeks. Brown paper does not go here, it goes in the blue bag.
• Green box three: glass bottles and jars, every two weeks. If you have no room for a third box, the council asks you to bag the glass and put it in the box next to the paper, so crews do not cut themselves.
• Blue bag: corrugated cardboard, light card and brown paper, every two weeks. All of it has to be inside the bag (green box and blue bag recycling).
• Food caddies: every week, and they go out on both weeks. You are entitled to a 23 litre outdoor caddy and a 7 litre kitchen caddy, both lockable and both dishwasher safe to 60C (food waste caddy).
• Brown bin: garden waste, every two weeks, but only if you have paid for it. See below.

The pattern is straightforward once you see it. Your green rubbish bin and food caddy go out one week; your boxes, blue bag and food caddy go out the next.

Two smaller items go inside a recycling box rather than in the bin: household batteries and vapes in a tied plastic bag, and small electricals in a plastic bag. The test the council gives for an electrical item is whether it has a plug, uses batteries, needs charging, or carries a crossed-out wheelie bin symbol.

Since September 2025 the council has issued 140 litre rubbish bins rather than 240 litre ones to new developments and to anyone asking for a replacement. Its reason is a Gloucestershire County Council waste analysis finding that a quarter of household rubbish is food and another 23 per cent is recyclable plastic, paper and card. You cannot buy an extra wheeled bin.

Find your collection day on the council’s own postcode checker. There is also a week 1 / week 2 calendar and a Google calendar version on the same page.

Garden waste costs £60 a year

The brown bin is a subscription, not a service you already pay for. It costs £60 per bin for twelve months, plus a £4.99 delivery charge per bin (garden waste: brown bin). The bin is 240 litres and is emptied fortnightly.

The terms of the scheme are stricter than most people expect:

• The subscription runs twelve months from the first of the month after your bin is delivered, not from the day you pay.
• Delivery can take up to 40 working days.
• Cancel part way through and there is no refund, and the bin is taken away.
• Let it lapse for under twelve months and you still pay the full £60 to rejoin, with no new-customer promotion.
• Only waste inside the bin is collected. Bags and boxes beside it are left.
• The service stops for four weeks over Christmas. This year that means the last collection is on Friday 18 December 2026 and the service restarts on Monday 18 January 2027.
• Branches over 10cm across, soil, ash, plant pots and growbags are all refused.
• A missed garden waste collection must be reported within two working days.

Bulky waste is £27 a unit, but not for fridges

A bulky collection costs £27 per unit, where a unit is roughly a double bed and mattress or a standard cooker. Some items count as half a unit and some as two, and everything is rounded up, so one and a half units is charged as two at £54. A three piece suite based on five seats is charged at a discounted £40.50, and a footstool counts as a seat (getting rid of large items).

Right now the council cannot take fridges or freezers at all. Nor can the county’s recycling centres. Gloucestershire County Council suspended cooling appliances at every household recycling centre from Saturday 8 August 2026, blaming a national backlog of appliances waiting to be processed (Gloucestershire County Council, 7 August 2026).

There is a gap in the advice worth spelling out. The county council’s release tells residents to “check whether their district or borough council offers a bulky waste collection service”. In Cheltenham that route is shut too, for the same reason. Unless a retailer will take your old appliance away when it delivers the new one, or you can give it away working, the council’s suggestion is to store it at home until the suspension lifts.

Two other things about bulky collections. Refunds are only given if you cancel at least three working days ahead, including if someone else takes the item first. And the council’s own page gives two different deadlines for putting items out: the booking section says 7.30am, the conditions of collection say 7am. Use 7am.

Missed collections: you have 48 hours

Report a missed bin within 48 hours of your scheduled day, online or on 01242 262626. The council aims to return within two working days of the report (report a missed collection).

Before you report it, check the service updates box at the top of that page, check your bin was out before 7am, and check it was on the kerbside. Crews cannot collect from private property unless an assisted collection has been agreed. Unsorted recycling is a common reason for a genuine non-collection rather than a miss.

In snow and ice the council asks you to leave the bin out rather than take it back in, and it will be emptied when crews can get out of the depot.

Assisted collections are available for ill health, permanent disability, infirmity, or where nobody at the property can put the bins out. Ask by email or on 01242 262626 (assisted collections).

Cheltenham has no tip. The nearest is Bishop’s Cleeve

This is the single biggest thing the council’s service pages do not say plainly. The household recycling centre on Swindon Road closed on 10 January 2025 and has not reopened. The last bookable slot was 2.30pm that day.

Cabinet took the decision on 26 November 2024, resolving that the site “will undergo a prolonged closure in order for a full options appraisal to be undertaken” (Cheltenham Borough Council, Waste and Recycling Review decision). The council’s reasons, set out in its own FAQ, are that tightened Environment Agency rules would need roughly £1 million of work: about £639,000 for a new concrete floor and kerbing to control run-off, about £20,000 for a new permit, and about £330,000 for covered storage and rearranging the site (future of the household recycling centre FAQ).

It matters that this was never a service Cheltenham had to run. Gloucestershire County Council is the waste disposal authority and is the body legally required to provide recycling centres. Swindon Road was discretionary and wholly funded by the borough. The county has confirmed on its own site that Swindon Road “is operated by Cheltenham Borough Council and is currently closed pending a review” (Gloucestershire Recycles, your nearest recycling centre).

So the nearest tip is Wingmoor Farm, half a mile west of Bishop’s Cleeve on the road to Stoke Orchard, GL52 7RS. What you need to know before you drive there:

• Booking is compulsory, for cars as well as vans, through the Gloucestershire Recycles booking system.
• It opens seven days a week. Summer hours are 9am to 5pm until Saturday 24 October 2026. Winter hours of 10am to 4pm run from Sunday 25 October 2026 to Saturday 27 March 2027.
• Arrive inside your 30 minute slot. Turn up early and you will be asked to come back.
• Vans, pick-ups and trailers with a load bed bigger than 6ft by 4ft need a van booking, are limited to one visit a day, and must be under 3.5 tonnes. Hire vans are booked by entering HIREVAN and bringing the rental agreement.
• No fridges or freezers, as above.
• There is no facility for hard plastics or Tetra Pak, so those go in general waste on site.
• There is a small reuse shop in the middle of the site. It is cash only.

Gloucester’s Hempsted centre is not a fallback at the moment either. It closed on 13 August 2026 for refurbishment and is expected to reopen mid-November (HRC closure days and seasonal opening hours). All county centres close on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, and open on bank holiday Mondays and Good Friday.

Recycling banks around the town

Ten bring bank sites take material the kerbside round does not. Four of them take the full range (recycling banks and centres):

One postcode on that list is wrong. The council gives Whaddon Road, Cheltenham Town FC as GL2 5NA, which is a Gloucester postcode district. The ground is in GL52. Search for the football club rather than the postcode.

Leaving waste beside a full bank is fly-tipping. The fixed penalty is £1,000, reduced to £450 if paid within 10 days, and the council says prosecution can bring a fine of up to £50,000 or twelve months in prison.

Replacement bins and boxes are no longer free

Since 1 January 2025 there is a delivery charge on containers: £4.99 for up to three items and £9.98 for up to six. Residents on Universal Credit, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Pension Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Carer’s Allowance or Housing Benefit pay £2.99 and £5.98 (ordering bins and recycling containers FAQs). Cabinet agreed the charges on 23 July 2024 and amended them on 26 November 2024, alongside the decision to close the recycling centre.

If a wheeled bin goes missing the first time, the bin is free and you pay only the delivery charge. If it goes missing more than once in two years you pay £20 per bin plus delivery. You are not charged if the crew took the bin into the lorry, or if Ubico broke a box putting it back. Delivery can take up to 40 working days.

That FAQ page contradicts itself on the one point people care about. It sets out a three-items-for-£4.99 rate, and then, under a separate question, says the council is “unable to offer a discounted delivery charge if you order more than one item”. The tiered price is the one in the Cabinet decision, so that is the one to expect.

Who actually collects your bins

Not the council directly. Collections, street cleansing and grounds maintenance in Cheltenham are delivered by Ubico Ltd, a teckal company jointly owned by several local authorities including Cheltenham and monitored by council officers. That is the name on the lorry, and it is the reason a cancelled garden waste bin can take up to four weeks to be retrieved.

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