Tuesday October 13th 2026
West Lothian Council is to introduce 15-minute booking slots at its five recycling centres.
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Stuart Sommerville
West Lothian Council confirmed it is to bring in more booking slots for its five recycling centres.
As revealed by the Local Democracy Reporting Service last month Operational Services is to rial 15-minute slots for the centres replacing the current 30 minute times.
The change was announced to a meeting of the council’s Executive as part of an update in services standards in waste collection and recycling.
A report said: “This change will bring the authority in line with surrounding Local Authorities and will create additional booking slots.
“The service will monitor the change frequently and if required will increase or decrease accordingly. The changes will be carried out as part of a Service operational review.”
The change will bring the county into line with standard practice at recycling centres in neighbouring authorities.
The changes brought a deluge of complaints when they were first introduced. The number of complaints has dropped dramatically as the new system has bedded in.
However there are many people, and many more anecdotally, struggle with the telephone booking system.
Residents can use any of the five CRCs in West Lothian and two sites are open each day (Monday to Friday) and all five sites are open at weekends.
In total, 404,530 slots were available across the five centres over the last year. However, around 12% of available slots were not booked, at all.
West Lothian’s CRCs had 357,517 bookings last year. However, 7.5% of these bookings did not turn up. Whilst the vast majority of people that book a slot use their slot, some do not show up. Unfortunately this is frustrating for both residents and the council who want to see each slot maximised.
When you combine the number of ‘no shows’ and the number of slots that are not booked, and left available, over 18% of slots are not being used. The service will also consider usage figures following the introduction of new time slots.
Tweet Share on FacebookNews
