Kensington bin days: rubbish collected twice a week

Two things about rubbish in Kensington and Chelsea surprise people who move here from almost anywhere else in England. The council collects household rubbish twice a week. And it will not empty a wheelie bin.

Everything on this page is from the council’s own pages, checked on 24 August 2026. Where a figure is for 2026/27, we say so.

The council does not collect from wheelie bins

There is no fortnightly grey bin here and no colour-coded lid system. The borough runs a black sack collection from kerbside properties, and the council says plainly that it does not supply dustbins and does not collect from wheeled bins, citing manual handling rules.

If you buy a bin to keep sacks in between collections, the council’s conditions are that it must be:

• no more than waist height
• fitted with a secure lid

You then have to take the sacks out of it and leave them tied on the pavement. (RBKC, dustbins)

Recycling goes out in clear bags, which the council delivers free. Estates and mansion blocks are different again: rubbish there goes into bulk containers, paladins or continental bins, and the council collects those twice a week too. Recycling for those buildings is at the mini recycling centres rather than at the door. (RBKC, estate and mansion block residents)

Finding your day: search by street, not postcode

The council’s lookup asks for a street name, chosen from a list of about 900, rather than a postcode or a house number. Pick your street and it returns your recycling, general waste and food waste days.

Find your bin collection day (rbkc.gov.uk)

Whatever day you get, the rule for putting it out is the same everywhere in the borough: before 7am on the day of collection, and not the night before. Leaving domestic waste out on any other day is an offence, and the council warns of a fixed penalty of up to £1,000 depending on how much was left and where. (RBKC, household rubbish and recycling)

Bank holidays: collected on most of them

This is the opposite of the usual rule. Kensington and Chelsea collects rubbish on most bank holidays. There are five days a year when it does not:

• Christmas Day
• Boxing Day
• New Year’s Day
• Good Friday
• the summer bank holiday

The summer exception matters this week. Monday 31 August 2026 is the summer bank holiday and the second day of Notting Hill Carnival, and there are no rubbish or dry mixed recycling collections anywhere in the borough on that Monday or on Tuesday 1 September. Our Carnival guide has the food waste and garden waste arrangements for that week, and the clean-up dates.

The council also asks residents to check road signs and local advertising for any other special arrangements.

Missed collection: report it after 3pm

If your rubbish has not gone by 3pm on your collection day, the council asks you to report it and says it will arrange collection within 24 hours.

There is a live problem with that. The council’s online forms are unavailable following the cyber attack on its systems in late November 2025, and its food waste page currently tells residents not to use them for missed collections, fly-tipping reports, recycling bag orders or street cleaning. In the meantime it gives phone 020 7361 3001, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. (RBKC, food waste collections)

Recycling: clear bags, 22 at a time, delivered by ward

Households that put waste out on the doorstep get a pack of 22 clear recycling bags per property every three months. The council uses clear bags deliberately, so crews can see whether the wrong things have gone in.

The deliveries run to a published ward rota rather than arriving with everyone at once, which is worth knowing before you ring up about a missing pack. The dates for 2026/27:

Source: RBKC, clear bag recycling. Portobello Road also gets green bags in the first slot of each quarter.

If you live in a shared building, the council leaves the whole house’s bags in the hallway or communal entrance and cannot deliver to individual flats. In managed blocks the supply goes to the site staff, so ask the concierge before assuming none arrived. (RBKC, recycling and rubbish FAQs)

What goes in the clear bag

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Two of the exclusions catch people out more than the rest: shredded paper and aerosol cans are both refused, as are all soft plastics, carrier bags, polystyrene and cling film. Metal lids should come off glass jars and go in loose. (RBKC, about recycling)

Mini recycling centres take the same materials, and most also have textile, shoe and book banks. Three of them have small electrical banks, for things like kettles, toasters and phones: Holland Park car park at the Abbotsbury Road entrance, Fulham Road at the Hortensia Road junction, and King’s Road outside the Co-op. Note that Cremorne Wharf and the Silchester Road mini recycling centre have closed permanently. (RBKC, mini recycling centres)

Food waste: you have to sign up

The food waste service is not automatic and the council describes it as still expanding. Once you have signed up, a kerbside household is sent a 7-litre kitchen caddy, a 23-litre outdoor caddy and twelve months of liners.

Flats and estates use communal bins, which the council arranges through the landlord or managing agent. If your block has none, the council’s answer is to ask the property manager to contact its team. There are also on-street food waste bins at five of the mini recycling centres, and residents living near one can sign up for a caddy and liners without any outdoor bin of their own.

The outdoor caddy goes at the front of the property by 7am, at kerbside level and as close to the pavement as possible, but not on the pavement itself, and not in a basement, a passage or a bin housing. Do not use black or opaque liners: crews need to see what is inside and will not take them.

Garden waste: £79.70 a year, fortnightly on a Wednesday

Garden waste is a paid subscription and it is bag-based rather than bin-based. For 2026/27:

• £79.70 a year, or £59.70 if you receive benefits
• collections are fortnightly, on a Wednesday
• the subscription year runs 1 April to 31 March, and joining later in the year costs only the remaining months
• the price covers up to three bags per collection, in bags the council supplies to new customers
• each extra bag of allowance costs £9 for the year
• there are no refunds once you have subscribed, even if you never use it

There is also a one-off collection of up to 20 reusable garden waste bags for £120, available to residents, community groups and garden squares. Branches thicker than 6cm, soil, logs, plant pots and gravel are all refused. (RBKC, garden waste collections)

Bulky waste: 10 items for £44, free on some benefits

The bulky service is called Too Big for the Bin. The price is £44 for up to 10 items, and it is non-refundable. If you receive Housing Benefit or Council Tax Support you may qualify for a free collection, and you will need your National Insurance number when you book.

The details that catch people out:

• collections run Monday to Saturday, 7am to 3pm, and never on Sundays or bank holidays
• there are no collections on the Tuesday after Notting Hill Carnival
• items must be out by 7am, and a missed collection because they were late is not refunded
• leave them at ground or basement level on your property, not on the pavement if you can avoid it, because items on the highway can be treated as fly-tipping
• a dismantled and bundled wardrobe counts as one item, but a dismantled sofa bed with the metal action removed counts as two
• genuinely heavy items such as American fridge freezers need a three-man crew, which runs only on the last Wednesday of the month
• changes and cancellations must reach the council by 12pm on the last working day before collection

Pianos, soiled mattresses, anything with bedbugs, car parts, paint and builders’ waste are all refused. (RBKC, book a bulky household waste collection)

Separately, the routine collection will not take furniture, white goods, paint, oil, carpets, wood, builders’ waste, or electrical appliances unless they fit in a normal black sack. (RBKC, what we collect)

The tip is in Wandsworth, and you have to book

There is no household waste and recycling centre inside the borough. Kensington and Chelsea belongs to the Western Riverside Waste Authority along with Hammersmith and Fulham, Lambeth, Wandsworth and Westminster, and its residents use WRWA’s sites.

Smugglers Way, Wandsworth, SW18 1JS is the one to use:

• Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm
• Saturday, 8am to 6pm
• Sunday, 8am to 5pm
• closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day

You must book a slot if you arrive by car. You do not need to book on foot, by bicycle or by motorcycle. There is a 2 metre height barrier, and vans, cars over 2m and cars towing trailers are turned away and sent to a transfer station instead. Take ID showing your name and address. (Wandsworth Council, household waste and recycling centre, Smugglers Way; WRWA)

The second WRWA site, Cringle Dock in Battersea, SW8 5BX, is closed to the public in cars. Traders and residents in vans can still use it. (RBKC, household waste and recycling centre)

Contacts

• Streetline, for bags, caddies, missed collections and bulky waste: 020 7361 3001
• Garden waste team: 020 7341 5199, Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm

More Kensington local information

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• Parking in Kensington
• Kensington council tax bands
• Kensington planning news