AN update has been issued on garden waste collections in the Maldon district amid drivers testing positive for Covid-19.

Maldon District Council has suspended its garden waste collections for the rest of the week as drivers for its contractor, Suez UK, have tested positive for Covid-19.

A spokesman for the council said: "Due to driver sickness including multiple positive cases of Covid-19, we have suspended garden waste collections for the rest of this week.

"If your garden waste was not collected on Tuesday March 15 or was due to be collected this week, please re-present it on your next scheduled collection day.

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"Our contractor Suez UK are working quickly to resume normal service so please bear with us."

The collection of garden waste is not part of the standard refuse or recycling collections, so these changes will affect residents who have signed up for this subscription service.

In October, the service had been impacted by the national shortage of HGV drivers which caused short notice cancellations across the service.

To make up for the missed collections they were added to the end of the collection year.

The annual renewal in 2022 was therefore delayed until mid-May.