Cabinet decides the parking freeze and the end of cash on 20 October. Wheelie bins started on 12 October, and the council overspend stands at £130,000.

Updated 14 October 2026

This report was first published on 4 June 2026, when the council had said only that wheelie bins would arrive "in the autumn". The district moved to wheelie bins on Monday 12 October. The agenda for Cabinet on Tuesday 20 October went up this week: it decides the parking freeze and the end of cash, takes the last progress report on the bin switch, and is asked to approve four housing strategies. The 22 September Cabinet decisions are further down, and the rest of October's meetings are listed at the end.

Households across the Sevenoaks district are in the first week of the biggest shake-up to their bin collections in decades. Sevenoaks District Council is spending £9.05 million on new waste and recycling services, and wheelie bins with kerbside glass replaced the green bags and sacks on Monday 12 October 2026. Its share of council tax went up 2.98% on 1 April, and Cabinet sets next April’s parking charges on 20 October. Here is what has actually been decided, what is still a proposal, and what it means for your kerb, your bill and your parking.

What was decided

Two separate council decisions are landing on residents this year. The first is the “BIG recycling upgrade”, a phased overhaul of how rubbish and recycling are collected. The second is the 2026/27 budget, agreed by full council on 24 February 2026, which sets the council tax and funds the year’s spending.

The waste change started with food. From 27 April 2026, most households began receiving weekly food waste collections. According to the council, this reaches around 49,000 of the district’s roughly 53,000 homes, with hard-to-serve communal blocks and estates brought in later in the year. The wheelie bins, glass and alternate weekly collections followed on 12 October.

On the money side, the council set a budget of £22.3 million for 2026/27, more than £2 million up on the previous year, and raised its own portion of the council tax by 2.98%.

The bin changes, in order

The waste overhaul has been delivered in stages rather than all at once. Here is the sequence the council set out.

From 27 April 2026: weekly food waste. Most homes, except flats, now get a weekly food waste collection. Residents receive two caddies: a small grey caddy for use indoors in the kitchen, and a larger black and orange caddy that goes out at the kerb. The council says food waste makes up around a third of what households throw away and is one of the heaviest items in the bin.

Mid-July to October 2026: two free wheelie bins delivered. The council said on 1 October that most of the 45,000 households moving to the new service had their bins. The last deliveries ran into the week of the switch: the council’s wheelie bin page said New Ash Green would not be finished before its first collection on Tuesday 13 October, and the Spitals Cross estate in Edenbridge was due to be done by Wednesday 14 October. Most households get a 240-litre wheelie bin with a green lid for recycling and a 180-litre black wheelie bin for general waste. The recycling bin takes plastics, metal tins, cans and trays, paper, cardboard and, for the first time at the kerbside, glass bottles and jars.

Since Monday 12 October 2026: alternate weekly collections. The switch was district-wide on one day, not household by household. General waste and recycling are now collected on alternate weeks, one bin one week and the other the next. Food waste stays weekly, and garden waste now comes in the same week as general waste. Each household should have had a postcard saying whether its first collection was recycling or general waste; if yours did not arrive, the council’s collection day finder has the dates. Green reusable bags are no longer emptied.

A small number of properties, such as flats above shops or homes without suitable storage or access, will not receive the bins and are likely to stay on their current arrangement. The council says communal recycling for flats will be improved in the coming years, with new banks for food waste, textiles and small electrical items.

What it means for you

For most homeowners and renters in houses, the practical changes are here.

  • Your kitchen routine has already changed. Food scraps go in the grey indoor caddy and the black and orange caddy goes out weekly. That carries on unchanged after 12 October.
  • Still no bins? If your neighbours have theirs and you do not, the council asks you to wait 24 hours before reporting it, as crews may still be in the area. Until they come, rubbish goes out in household sacks and recycling in cardboard boxes or clear sacks. You do not pay for the bins; the council has costed them into the £9.05 million programme.
  • Glass no longer needs a separate trip. Glass bottles and jars now go in the green-lidded recycling bin instead of being taken to a bottle bank.
  • Out by 7am, in by 4pm. General waste and recycling alternate week to week, and rubbish, recycling and food waste come on different lorries at different times of day, so a bin still full at lunchtime is not yet a missed collection.
  • Flats are on a different timeline. If you live in a flat, you keep using communal facilities, with improvements promised over the next few years rather than this autumn.

Your collection week, what goes in which bin and whether you can refuse a bin (you cannot) are all covered on our Sevenoaks bin collection days page.

The council frames the upgrade partly as a response to new government rules requiring councils to offer a wider range of home recycling from 2026, and partly as a cost and carbon saving. It estimates the food waste change alone will save more than £500,000 a year in disposal costs paid to Kent County Council, because food waste is processed differently from general rubbish.

The cost, and where the money goes

The £9.05 million figure is not abstract. The council has broken it down into three main areas: £6.6 million for new waste collection vehicles, £2.09 million for the wheelie bins themselves, and £360,000 for the food waste containers.

Cllr Irene Roy, the council’s Cabinet Member for Cleaner and Greener, described the programme as “one of the biggest investments in the Council’s 51-year history”. On the food waste element, she said: “Food waste makes up around a third of household waste and is one of the heaviest things we throw away.”

The council tax side

Running alongside the bin changes is the council’s 2026/27 budget, agreed in February. The district council raised its own share of council tax by 2.98% from 1 April 2026. For a Band D home, that works out at an extra £7.47 a year, or about 14 pence a week, on the Sevenoaks District Council portion.

It is worth being clear about what that figure is and is not. The district council’s share is only one slice of your total council tax bill. The largest part goes to Kent County Council, with further amounts for the police, the fire service and your town or parish council. The 2.98% rise applies only to the district’s slice, not to the whole bill. For the full breakdown by band, see our page on Sevenoaks council tax bands.

The wider £22.3 million budget also funds capital projects beyond bins, including regeneration of land east of Sevenoaks High Street, new housing in Swanley, and a new community hall and shop on the Spitals Cross Estate in Edenbridge. Cllr Kevin Maskell, Leader of Sevenoaks District Council, said the authority could “once again set a balanced budget while investing more in services that are important to our residents”.

Parking: a freeze, with cash phased out

On Thursday 1 October the Cleaner and Greener Advisory Committee backed a package for 2027/28 that Cabinet decides at 7pm on Tuesday 20 October; it is a key decision on the published agenda. If Cabinet agrees, it starts on 1 April 2027.

  • No rise in car park or on-street charges, season tickets, permits or vouchers. The council’s benchmarking shows most other Kent councils raising charges by about 2.5%.
  • Cash phased out at council pay machines. The council says 89% of parking payments already come by phone app or card; its 2025/26 parking report puts MiPermit at 67%, contactless at 22% and cash at 11%.
  • A weekend charge at Gordon Road, the car park beside the council offices that is free on Saturdays and Sundays now. The officers’ report priced it at £5 a day and £60,000 a year in income, with £22,000 saved by ending cash collection.

The committee chose this over the other option in the report, a 2.5% rise on all fees and charges. Cabinet is also asked to let the Strategic Head of Direct Services lower the all-day rate at the Bradbourne Road multi-storey “if required”, the car park where the September money report blamed a rival private car park for lost income. The council’s announcement does not give the weekend price, and the Cabinet papers say the committee’s minute “was not available prior to the printing of these papers and will follow”. The detail is in Sevenoaks parking charges frozen, but cash to go from April, and our parking guide lists every council car park.

What else is on Cabinet’s agenda on 20 October

  • The bin switch, for information. The last progress report before the switch says 952 tonnes of food waste were collected in the four months to 27 August, about 52 tonnes a week, and that around 3,200 of the 17,000 garden waste subscribers get an extra collection between 12 and 19 October so the change of week does not leave them waiting three weeks. Delivery of part of the new lorry fleet ran late, with around half due by the end of September, so short-term hired vehicles cover the start; the report says that cost is within the project budget.
  • Four housing strategies to 2031. The Tenancy Strategy, the Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy and action plan, the Housing Allocations Policy and the Private Sector Housing Enforcement Policy, all seen by the Housing and Health Advisory Committee on 6 October. The homelessness strategy is the one consulted on this summer: homelessness strategy consultation.

What Cabinet decided on 22 September

Cabinet met at 7pm on Tuesday 22 September in the Council Chamber on Argyle Road and resolved six items. The draft minutes, and the notice that puts the decisions into force, were published the next day. Here is the record.

  • Money: the overspend stands at £130,000, and the pay award adds £71,000 to it. Cabinet noted the financial monitoring report to the end of July, which forecasts an adverse variance of £130,000 by 31 March 2027. The Strategic Head of Finance told members the staff pay award has since been settled at 3.3%, which is forecast to cost £71,000 more than the budget allowed. The pressures named in the report are contractor costs in building control, lost Sunday Market rents and lower parking income at Bradbourne car park, where a privately owned car park is taking custom. The capital programme is £27.9 million this year and is forecast to come in slightly under, because the final retention payment on 27-37 High Street in Swanley brought that scheme in under budget. Members asked whether the Swanley Market contract, which expires in March 2027, could go to other operators or involve the town council.
  • Borrowing: the internal cash has run out. Cabinet approved the treasury management annual report for 2025/26. The council earned £748,000 in interest last year at 4.43%, and took no new loans beyond short-term cash flow borrowing at the year end. On the £1.6 million of capital spending that was not funded, officers said it had been met by internal borrowing and that there is “no longer capacity” for more, so external loans have to be investigated. Up to £100 million of external borrowing has been approved and none of it has been drawn down. Members were told Public Works Loan Board rates are high, that some projects have already moved outside the council’s appetite for borrowing on feasibility grounds, and that each one will now be judged case by case. The background is on our page on Sevenoaks council finances.
  • The Vine order runs to December 2029, from 1 October. The anti-social behaviour PSPO at The Vine was extended for a further three years. The consultation drew 143 responses, 60 of them from people under 18; 107 backed extending the order and 129 agreed with the prohibitions as they stand. No fixed penalty notices have been issued at The Vine this year. The decision takes effect on 1 October.
  • Halstead car meets: a consultation, and new fine levels from 26 October. Cabinet agreed a four to six week public consultation on extending the PSPO at Hewitts Roundabout on London Road, Halstead, which was first made in 2024. Over four weeks this summer the council issued more than 100 community protection warnings and fixed penalty notices there; just over half of the fines were paid within 14 days, some are on payment plans and some have been contested and reviewed by Kent Police. New fine levels apply from 26 October and the money goes into the community safety budget. The council is also asking Transport for London to fit an ANPR camera to one of its lampposts, so that residents are not the ones filming. Both orders are covered in Vine PSPO extended, Halstead consultation agreed.
  • A safeguarding policy, but not yet. The district safeguarding policy for 2026 to 2030 was agreed as a recommendation to full council rather than as a decision. The extraordinary council meeting set for the same evening was cancelled, so the policy waits for the next full council on Tuesday 1 December.
  • Committee places. The membership of the Cabinet advisory committees, the CIL Spending Board and the Sevenoaks Joint Transportation Board for 2026/27 was approved, with immediate effect.

Two answers to councillors’ questions are worth recording. On finance, the Leader said that with local government reorganisation paused the council’s three-year budget no longer has a fixed timetable behind it and “a range of options” is being explored, with the ten-year budget as a firm base. On the regeneration of land east of the High Street, members were told the development agreement with the council’s chosen partner is still unsigned, and that a letter will go to businesses, councillors and local councils in the next few weeks setting out when the engagement programme begins.

Elsewhere, and the rest of October

  • Abolition paused. On 7 September the Government paused local government reorganisation, including the decision to close Sevenoaks District Council in April 2028: what the pause changes.
  • The green bags. Residents can keep them; the council plans a temporary service in early 2027 to collect any that people do not want. It says they cost £255,000, replaced around four million single-use sacks and produced a net saving of £225,000: wheelie bins start 12 October.
  • The rest of October. All at 7pm unless stated: the Development Management Committee on Thursday 15 October (three traveller pitches at Troy Lane, Edenbridge, and the former Cock Inn forecourt in Halstead, both recommended for approval: planning applications), Cabinet on Tuesday 20 October and Scrutiny on Thursday 22 October. Licensing hearings sit at 10.30am on 21 October and at 10.30am and 2pm on 27 October. The new fine levels at the Halstead car meet site apply from 26 October. Full council next meets on Tuesday 1 December.
  • The full detail of the bin switch, as announced in July: Sevenoaks wheelie bins recycling upgrade.

Sources

Image: “Sevenoaks District Council Offices” by Richard Kelly, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sevenoaks_District_Council_Offices.jpg).