Rubbish collections will take more than a month to get back to normal in York after the extended Christmas and Millennium holiday period.

But the services provided by neighbouring authorities will be back to normal on January 3 or, at the latest by January 9.

Householders across York will find their collection days changing every week throughout January as City of York Council struggles to get back to normal.

Residents must remember when to put their refuse out or risk missing the binmen's weekly round.

The collection service is taking considerably longer to get back to normal than at previous Christmases because there are four bank holidays as we move into the Millennium year, rather than the usual three.

Collections will be made six days later than normal for households usually visited on December 29, 30 and 31.

After that the number of days between the usual collection time and the revised time will gradually drop until it is only one day out by the end of January.

The service will return to normal by the beginning of February.

A City of York Council spokeswoman said: "We will be working on getting back to the normal routine as quickly as possible and this is the only way we can do it.

"It will take us five weeks to recover from the bank holidays. We could have changed collection dates permanently, but we considered that would have caused more disruption."

The January collection timetable has been publicised in the York Citizen which is delivered to all homes in York.

In Ryedale an extra refuse collection wagon will operate when normal collections resume on Bank Holiday Monday, January 3, to help refuse staff catch up.

In the Selby area, the district council aims to resume normal services on Monday, January 3.

In Hambleton, the district council will be operating collections a day late during the week of Monday, January 3, to Sunday, January 9.

In the East Riding of Yorkshire a revised service will be in operation between Monday, January 3, and Friday, January 7.

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