WASTE and recycling collections from the 52,000 households in the Stroud district are now being collected by a new contractor.

Despite the changes, the council are stressing it will be ‘business as usual’ for residents.

Cheltenham-based Ubico took over as waste contractor for Stroud District Council this week.

The contract was previously held by international company Veolia Environmental Services.

Cllr Simon Pickering, chairman of Stroud District Council’s environment committee, said residents wouldn’t see any difference with their collections.

“Whilst Ubico is a new contractor, the teams making the collections are the same, as the former Veolia employees have transferred to Ubico,” he said.

“It will look after waste and recycling collections, street cleaning, public buildings and public toilet cleaning just like its predecessor.”

Ubico was born out of Cheltenham Borough Council’s waste team in 2012 in a joint partnership with Cotswold District Council.

As well as collecting waste and recycling from the two councils that formed the company, it also collects for Tewkesbury Borough Council and now Stroud.

Cllr Pickering added: “One of the advantages of working with Ubico is that we are shareholders in the business, which means there is a greater degree of flexibility.

“If, for instance, we need to make changes in the future to our waste and recycling services, we can react quickly to this and make the necessary changes, rather than having to go through lengthy tendering processes.”

Residents are being reassured that there is no change to their regular waste collections and they should continue to put rubbish and recycling out for collection by 6am on their usual collection day.