Put your rubbish and recycling out before 5am on Friday 14 August, not the usual 6am. Hillingdon moved collections earlier with Heathrow forecast to hit 33C.

Hillingdon Council has brought its rubbish and recycling collections forward on Friday 14 August, and is asking residents to put their waste out before 5am rather than the usual 6am.

The instruction is carried as a site-wide notice on the council’s own website. In its words: “Temperatures are forecast to exceed 30°C on Friday 14 August. To protect our rubbish and recycling crews during the hottest part of the day, collections will start earlier. Please put your rubbish and recycling out before 5am on these days.” (Hillingdon Council)

That is an hour earlier than the council’s standing rule. Hillingdon runs household collections Monday to Friday “starting at 6am”, and tells residents to “leave your rubbish and recycling at the front of your property before 6am” on their collection day. (Look up my collection day, Hillingdon Council) Anyone whose habit is to wheel the bin out at half past five is now cutting it fine.

The forecast behind the decision is real. The Met Office puts Friday’s maximum at Heathrow, inside the borough, at 33°C under clear sun, falling back to 28°C on Saturday. (Met Office forecast, Heathrow) Thursday was hotter still: the Met Office had an amber warning for extreme heat covering Greater London and the counties around it, in force from 09:00 to 23:59 on Thursday 13 August, with the warning text noting that “very high temperatures may lead to impacts on Thursday”. No warning was in force for Friday at the time of writing. (UK weather warnings, Met Office)

The one thing to do

Put the bins and bags out the night before, or before 5am on Friday.

Hillingdon collects general waste, clear recycling sacks, garden waste and food waste on the same day as each other, and all of it is taken from the front of the property. If you have no front garden, the council allows tied bags to go on the pavement the evening before, but not earlier than 5.30pm. (Collection days, Hillingdon Council)

Panel comparing Hillingdon's normal 6am deadline for putting rubbish and recycling out with the earlier before-5am deadline on Friday 14 August, alongside forecast maximum temperatures of 33C on Friday and 28C on Saturday
What changes on Friday, and the forecast behind it. Sources: Hillingdon Council collection days page and site notice; Met Office forecast for Heathrow. Graphic by Uxbridge News.

What it means for you

If your collection day is Friday, the practical risk is simply a missed bin. Crews starting earlier means a lorry can reach your street well before the hour you are used to, and a bin presented at 6am may find the round has already passed.

Two details are worth reading closely. The first is that the council’s notice names one date, Friday 14 August, but then refers to “these days” in the plural. It does not list any others. If your collection falls later in the month and the heat returns, check the council’s own page rather than assuming the early start has been extended.

The second is that this changes when you put waste out, not which day it is collected. Nothing in the notice moves anyone’s collection day, and the council’s separate arrangements for bank holidays are unaffected. If you are not certain which day is yours, the council runs a postcode lookup on the same page.

The heat is also the reason this is happening at all: the stated purpose is to keep crews off the round during the hottest part of the afternoon, which on Friday means the hours either side of the 33°C peak.

For everything else moving around the borough this week, our Uxbridge roadworks and travel page tracks the closures and disruption, and things to do in Uxbridge covers the parks and pools worth knowing about in weather like this.