Photo: Martin Adison
Oldham Council is publicising details of restricted services during the Christmas and New Year period. Many services and facilities usually offered to the public by the Local Authority and its partners will be scaled down during the holiday period. Out-of-hours services will remain available for urgent situations such as social care and other emergencies, but residents should only use them in genuine cases.The services affected, and details of emergency contact telephone numbers, will be outlined in a series of advertisements in the local press and on the Oldham Council website at http://www.oldham.gov.uk/christmas_closures Posters will be displayed at affected venues with full details of the closure arrangements.
There will be no household waste and recycling collections on Wednesday 25 and Thursday 26 December and Wednesday, January 1. Only households which have Wednesday and Thursday collections will be affected by changes to their collection arrangements. Alternate collections for general rubbish and food and garden waste for all affected households have been arranged for Saturdays 21 and 28 December and January 4, 2014 so residents should put out the relevant waste containers.
Households will receive leaflets with all the relevant information about changes to their collections in the run up to Christmas. All other collection days will remain the same. This information will also be published on the Council’s website and Facebook pages, in the local press and on Twitter.
Oldham Council staff are taking three days out of their annual leave entitlement allowance (December 27, 30 and 31) to enable the closure to take place. Councillor Abdul Jabbar, Cabinet Member for Finance, said: “This is the sixth time we have operated the Christmas closure scheme and it has proved successful in previous years. This is a very quiet time for the core services we provide so residents should be relatively unaffected. I would, however, urge residents to familiarise themselves with these arrangements. It is important people are aware that many of our usual services will be shut, and that they should only contact us if they have a genuine need to.
“All employees have been notified they need to take three days’ leave from their normal annual entitlement for this purpose. This makes good, sound economic sense for Council Tax payers, having saved the Authority more than £75,000 last year over the shutdown. We have thoroughly planned this year’s closure. I would like to reassure residents that if they have an urgent need there will be staff and resources available to cope and provide assistance.”
