WILTSHIRE Council has shared advice to help locals speed up their trips to Salisbury's household waste recycling centre during its reduced winter opening hours.

Drivers faced queues of up to 45 minutes to access the recycling centre at Churchfields Industrial Estate on November 2 – the first day of its winter timetable. 

Peter Hawtin sent us this photograph while he was waiting to access the centre.

The winter opening hours have been in place since 2017 and mean the Salisbury site is open until 10am and 4pm daily, except for Thursday and Friday, from November 1.

For the rest of the year (April 1 to October 31), the centre is open from 9am until 4pm daily, except for Thursdays.

Responding to a Facebook post by the authority, Wiltshire resident David John Mant said the hours “make recycling even more difficult”.

A household waste recycling centre (Image: Wiltshire Council) Councillor Dominic Muns, Wiltshire Council's cabinet member for waste and environment, said: “The current summer and winter opening hours have been in place for six years and aim to provide as much access as possible for residents.

“As part of this, we’ve provided additional opening days at our busiest sites at Salisbury, Trowbridge and Stanton St Quinton, which are open six days a week during the summer.

“Every site is also open for an extra hour each day during the summer.

“Before the changes were implemented in 2017, we typically saw usage reduce between November and March so have amended opening hours accordingly.

“To help speed up the trip to the HRC, we’re encouraging people to ‘sort before you bring it’ or use the sorting stations at each site which will also help to prevent unnecessary waste going to landfill.”