Some permit holders switch collection week on 12 October; the council's emails telling them were due in late September. Sacks paused 12 to 16 Oct. £65 a year.
Garden waste is the one collection in Sevenoaks you have to pay for separately, and the one people most often find sitting untouched at the kerb. This page sets out how the subscription works, what it costs in 2026, how to find your own fortnightly dates, and the handful of rules buried in the council’s terms and conditions that catch subscribers out: the renewal date that follows your application rather than the calendar, the £75 you can be charged for a bin you fail to return, and a missed-collection deadline that the council states two different ways. It also carries the two changes the council has now confirmed for the autumn: sack collections stop for a week in October, and some permit holders are being moved to a different collection week altogether.
The quick answer
Sevenoaks District Council collects garden waste fortnightly, usually on the same day as your rubbish, but only from households that have bought a permit. A 240-litre bin costs £65 a year, a 140-litre bin £48, and the service runs for 48 weeks with a four-week break over Christmas and New Year, so roughly 24 collections a year. There is no district-wide calendar: enter your address in the council’s collection day checker and it returns your next garden waste date. Bins must be at your property boundary by 7am, and anything left beside the bin is not taken. Two changes are now confirmed for the autumn. Garden waste sack collections are suspended from Monday 12 to Friday 16 October 2026 while the district switches to wheelie bins, and collections from subscribed bins run as normal that week. Separately, the council is aligning garden waste weeks with general waste weeks, so some permit holders move to the other fortnight from 12 October. It said it would email permit holders in late September with any change to their week, and its main bins page now says every household should already have a postcard with its new alternate weekly dates.
How to find your garden waste collection dates
There is no published 2026 calendar for the district, and there cannot be a single one: rounds are split across the week and across alternate weeks, so two streets a mile apart sit on opposite fortnights.
Two steps get you the rest of the year. Put your address into the council’s find your waste collection day tool, which returns your next garden waste date alongside rubbish, recycling and food waste. Then put that one date into the finder below, and it counts the fortnights forward and marks the weeks the pattern breaks.
Your garden waste dates from here
The counting is arithmetic on the date you enter, nothing is fetched. The exceptions marked on it are the council's own: the suspension of sack collections from 12 to 16 October, and subscribed bins carrying on as normal that week, are from the notice at the top of the garden waste collection page; the 48-week year and the four-week festive break are from the same page; the right to move a collection day mid-permit is section 7 of the terms and conditions; the alignment of garden waste weeks with general waste weeks, and the late-September email to permit holders, are from the council's changes to garden waste collection weeks page; the bank holidays are the England and Wales list from GOV.UK. The Christmas break is flagged as a window rather than dated because the council has not published its festive dates. That window is not a guess: a four-week break covering both Christmas Day and New Year's Day cannot begin before 4 December or end after 22 January, so anything falling between those two dates is marked to be checked. One limit is worth stating plainly: counting fortnights cannot survive a change of week. If the council moves you to the other fortnight on 12 October, every date here from that point lands a week out, so treat the run past 12 October as provisional until the council's email or its new schedule confirms your week.
If you would rather do it on paper, note the weekday and the week and count forward in fortnightly steps. The council’s own terms name the checker as the definitive source for your collection day, so if a printed date and the checker disagree, the checker wins (garden waste terms and conditions, section 2). Starting from GOV.UK’s rubbish collection day finder gets you to the same place: it matches your postcode to Sevenoaks District Council and hands you over.
Three things break the fortnightly pattern between now and the spring, and all three are worth pencilling in.
The week of 12 October. Sack collections stop altogether for five days. Subscribed bins are emptied as normal that week, so this one falls on the cheaper option only. The detail is further down this page.
Your collection week, from 12 October. This is the one that has changed since we last updated this page, and it is bigger than a weekday shift. The council is aligning garden waste weeks with general waste weeks for the new alternate weekly service, so some permit holders move to the other fortnight rather than keeping the one they are on. The weekday can move too, because the terms let the council change a collection day at any point in the collection period (section 7). The detail, and what the council has promised to send you, is further down this page.
Christmas and New Year. The longest gap of the year, and bigger than people expect: the subscription covers 48 weeks rather than 52, and a four-week pause removes two fortnightly collections rather than one. The council has not published its festive dates yet, and the terms say where they will appear when it does: any change of collection day caused by a bank holiday is published in advance on the council’s website and its social media accounts (terms and conditions, section 2). What is already fixed is the bank holidays themselves, and 2026 is an awkward year for them: Christmas Day is Friday 25 December, Boxing Day falls on the Saturday so the bank holiday becomes Monday 28 December, and New Year’s Day is Friday 1 January 2027.
What garden waste collection costs in Sevenoaks
| Option | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| 240-litre wheelie bin | £65 a year | Bin loaned to you, 48 weeks of fortnightly collections |
| 140-litre wheelie bin | £48 a year | Smaller bin for a small garden or tight storage |
| Additional wheelie bin | £37.50 plus a £65 permit | The extra bin is yours to keep, the permit still renews yearly |
| Sacks, bundle of 25 | £29 | 80 litres each, use them as you need to |
| Sacks, bought singly | £1.16 each | Same collection, no bin to store |
Two details worth knowing before you choose. The bin the council delivers on a £65 permit is loaned, not sold, it stays council property, and it may arrive as a refurbished unit. An additional bin at £37.50 is different: that one you own outright, though it still needs its own £65 permit to be emptied.
Sacks are the cheaper entry point for a small garden, but only the council’s own sacks are collected. Garden waste presented in bags bought anywhere else, or in any other container, is left at the kerb. You can buy bundles from the council or from the outlets across the district that also stock 50p food caddy liners, listed in full on our bin collection days page.
How long the bin takes to arrive
The council’s service page promises delivery within 20 working days. The terms and conditions promise within one month. Take the longer figure as your planning assumption, because the same terms add the point that matters: your permit is only valid once the bin has been delivered. You are not paying for time you spend waiting.
The renewal trap: your year is not the council’s year
Permits run for 12 months from the date of your original application, not from April or any other fixed date. Renewing is your responsibility, the council does not do it for you, and collections simply stop when the permit expires.
The part that catches people is what happens next. If you decide not to renew, the loaned bin has to go back. If it is not returned, the council reserves the right to recover either the bin or £75 from you: more than the annual subscription that prompted you to stop. Tell the council you are finished and it will arrange collection of the bin, again within 20 working days.
A few other clauses from the same terms are worth having in mind:
- You can cancel within 14 days of subscribing without giving a reason, though the council may deduct what it has already spent setting the service up.
- Cancel and the bin stops being emptied, even if there is garden waste in it.
- Moving within the district? You can usually take the service with you, but you have to tell the council, by email to recycling@sevenoaks.gov.uk, in time for it to arrange the new address.
- Repeated contamination lets the council withdraw the service with immediate notice and take the bin back.
- Terms and prices are reviewed every year, and any change reaches you through the renewal process rather than a separate notice.
What can go in the garden waste bin
The test the council applies is simple: it has to be compostable and shreddable.
Accepted: lawn cuttings, flowers, leaves, hedge trimmings, weeds, twigs, small shrubs, and branches under one metre long and 50mm (2 inches) thick.
Refused: soil, turf, stones, rubble, food waste, plastic, paper, wood, fencing, pet litter or animal waste of any kind, branches over the size limit, and compostable magazine wrappers, which do not break down efficiently at the composting facility even though they will in a home compost bin.
Crews can also refuse a bin they suspect of holding the wrong material, one that is dangerously overloaded, or one too heavy to lift safely, and only what is inside the bin is taken. Side waste stacked next to it stays where it is. Anything too big or on the refused list needs a trip to Dunbrik or Pedham Place, where you have to book a slot first.
If your property is turned down for a bin
Eligibility is checked automatically when you order, and not every home passes. The council names steps at the front of the property, not enough space to store a bin, and collection vehicles being unable to reach you as reasons an application can fail. The service is also closed to commercial properties.
A refusal is not the end of it: households that cannot have a bin can usually still have sacks collected on the same fortnightly round. And if you cannot move a full bin to the boundary yourself, the council points you to its assisted collection service rather than expecting you to manage.
A missed garden waste collection: report it the same day
The council states its reporting deadline two different ways. The garden waste terms and conditions give you two working days. The council’s own missed-collection page says it will only investigate a report made within one working day. Work to the shorter deadline, because that is the rule the team handling the report is following.
The process:
- Wait until 4pm on your collection day. Garden waste, food waste, recycling and rubbish go on different lorries at different times, so an empty kerb at lunchtime means nothing.
- Check the obvious first: out by 7am, at the property boundary, no bank holiday change, and no sticker left by the crew explaining why it was not emptied.
- Then use the council’s report a missed rubbish, food or garden waste collection form.
Report it late and the bin waits until the next scheduled collection, which for garden waste means a fortnight.
What the October 2026 wheelie bin switch means for garden waste
From 12 October 2026 most of the district moves to wheelie bins and alternate weekly collections: a 240-litre green-lidded bin for all recycling, glass included for the first time, and a 180-litre black bin for general waste, with the food caddy staying weekly. We have set out the full changeover on our bin collection days page.
Sack collections stop from 12 to 16 October
The council has now confirmed one direct consequence for garden waste customers, and it falls on the cheaper option rather than the permit. Sack collections are suspended for the changeover week:
From 12 October 2026, we’re introducing wheelie bin collections. To help us safely manage the biggest change to our waste services in a generation, Garden Waste Sack Collections will be suspended from 12 to 16 October. Garden waste collections from subscribed bins will still take place during this period.
That notice sits at the top of the council’s own garden waste collection page. It is worth reading closely, because the split is not obvious from the headline:
- If you have a permit and a green garden waste bin, nothing changes. Your fortnightly collection runs through that week as normal.
- If you buy the council’s sacks, your collection does not happen if your round falls between Monday 12 and Friday 16 October. Garden waste is fortnightly, so in practice the next one is the following fortnight, and sacks put out during the suspended week will be left.
- The pause is five weekdays only. Collections resume the week of 19 October.
The council has not published anything on the suspended week beyond that notice, and the pause is not mentioned on its main wheelie bin page, so sack customers who only read the headline announcement will not have seen it.
Your collection week can change, not just the day
The council has now published a short page of its own on what the changeover does to garden waste rounds, and it goes further than the collection-day clause in the terms:
From Monday 12 October 2026, we will introduce alternate weekly collections for waste and recycling in wheelie bins. To support this change, we are aligning general waste and garden waste collection weeks. This means some garden waste customers will have a new collection week.
Read that carefully, because a new week is not the same as a new day. Garden waste is fortnightly, so anyone whose week is flipped to the other fortnight sees the gap around 12 October stretch or shrink by seven days, and every date they had counted out after that lands wrong. A household moved onto the later fortnight waits three weeks rather than two; one moved onto the earlier fortnight gets a single one-week gap and then settles back into the normal rhythm.
The council committed to two letters, and by 1 October both were due:
- Every household was to be written to during September about its alternate weekly collection cycle. The council’s wheelie bin page now says you “should have received a postcard by now” with your alternate weekly collection dates. That postcard covers rubbish and recycling, not garden waste.
- Garden waste permit holders were to be emailed separately in late September about any change to their garden bin collection week. The council has not said whether a permit holder who gets no email can take it that their week stays the same, so if nothing has arrived, check your spam folder and then the email address on your permit account before 12 October rather than after it.
The council also says the new collection schedule will go on its website nearer the time, and as of 1 October its changes to garden waste collection weeks page still says exactly that. Until it does, the address checker returns dates under the current rounds, which is why the finder at the top of this page treats anything after 12 October as provisional.
One thing the council’s page does make unambiguous for sack customers: “Please do not put garden waste sacks out this week as they will not be collected.”
Beyond the week and the day, the subscription itself is unchanged: it was already a fortnightly wheelie bin service and stays one. The permit, the price and the frequency are untouched. Re-check your address in the council checker in the week after 12 October so you are not putting the green garden bin out on the old day.
One thing to keep straight in the meantime: the new green-lidded recycling bin is not the green garden waste bin. Until 12 October a green bin at a Sevenoaks kerb means garden waste, and the new bins should stay unused and at your property until the service starts. The council asks you to leave their seals on until one week before your first wheelie bin collection.
Cheaper ways to deal with garden waste
£65 is not the only option, and for some gardens it is not the best one.
- Home composting. Around a third of household waste is peelings, leaves and cuttings that can be composted at home. The council points residents to Getcomposting.com for bins, and to a Green Johanna (330 litres, takes cooked and raw food plus about one part garden waste to two parts food) or a Green Cone (80 litres, dug into a sunny spot, food only) for anything a standard bin will not handle.
- The tip. Both district recycling centres take garden waste free, so an occasional car load costs nothing beyond the trip. Booking is compulsory: see Sevenoaks tip opening times.
- Sacks instead of a bin. At £1.16 a sack, a garden that produces a few bags a year is far cheaper served this way than on a £65 permit, and there is nothing to store between collections. The one drawback this autumn is the suspended week of 12 to 16 October, which permit holders are exempt from.
Frequently asked questions
How often is garden waste collected in Sevenoaks?
Fortnightly, usually on the same weekday as your rubbish collection. The subscription covers 48 weeks a year with a four-week break over Christmas and New Year, which works out at about 24 collections.
What are the garden waste collection dates for 2026 in Sevenoaks?
There is no single district calendar. Enter your address in Sevenoaks District Council’s collection day checker and it returns your next garden waste date, then count forward in fortnights. Bank holiday weeks shift and the Christmas break interrupts the pattern.
How much does garden waste collection cost in Sevenoaks?
£65 a year for a 240-litre bin, £48 for a 140-litre bin, £37.50 plus a £65 permit for an additional bin, or £29 for 25 sacks, about £1.16 each.
When does my Sevenoaks garden waste permit expire?
Twelve months after the date of your original application, not on a fixed council date. Renewal is your responsibility and collections stop when the permit runs out.
What happens if I do not renew my garden waste permit?
Collections stop and the loaned bin must be returned. If it is not, the council reserves the right to recover the bin or £75 from you.
Can I put soil or branches in the garden waste bin?
No. Soil, turf, stones, rubble, wood, fencing and branches over one metre long or 50mm thick are all refused. Take them to Dunbrik or Pedham Place instead, booking a slot first.
Are garden waste collections suspended in October 2026?
Sack collections are, from Monday 12 to Friday 16 October 2026, while the district switches to wheelie bins. Collections from subscribed garden waste bins carry on as normal that week, and sack collections resume the week of 19 October.
Does the wheelie bin change on 12 October affect garden waste?
Yes, in two ways. Sack collections pause for that week, and some customers get a new collection week, because the council is aligning garden waste weeks with general waste weeks for the new alternate weekly service. The permit, the price and the fortnightly frequency are unchanged. Re-check the council’s checker after 12 October.
Is my Sevenoaks garden waste collection week changing in October 2026?
It may be. The council says it is aligning general waste and garden waste collection weeks from 12 October 2026, and that some garden waste customers will have a new collection week as a result. It said it would email permit holders in late September with any change to theirs, and households should by now have a postcard with their alternate weekly rubbish and recycling dates. As of 1 October no district garden waste schedule is published, so if no email has reached you, check the address on your permit account before 12 October.
How long do I have to report a missed garden waste collection?
The council’s missed-collection page says it will only investigate reports made within one working day, though the garden waste terms say two. Report it after 4pm on the day itself to be safe.
Sources
- Sevenoaks District Council, garden waste collection (prices, 48-week year, sacks, additional bins, 20 working day delivery, and the 12 to 16 October sack suspension notice)
- Sevenoaks District Council, Garden Waste Collection Service terms and conditions (PDF: eligibility, 12-month permit anniversary, £75 bin recovery, 14-day cancellation, contamination, address changes)
- Sevenoaks District Council, what to put in your garden waste sack or wheelie bin
- Sevenoaks District Council, report a missed rubbish, food or garden waste collection (one working day, the 4pm rule)
- Sevenoaks District Council, changes to garden waste collection weeks (the alignment of general waste and garden waste weeks, the September letter to households, the late-September email to permit holders, and the instruction not to put sacks out in the suspended week)
- Sevenoaks District Council, wheelie bin collections from October 2026
- Sevenoaks District Council, home composting and where to buy garden waste sacks
- Sevenoaks District Council, find your waste collection day and assisted rubbish collection
Every price and rule on this page was re-checked at source on 20 September 2026, against the council’s garden waste collection page, its changes to garden waste collection weeks page and its service terms and conditions. Prices, the 48-week year and the 12 to 16 October sack suspension are unchanged since 8 September; the collection-week alignment is new. Charges are reviewed annually, so confirm on the council’s own pages before you subscribe or renew.
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