Leigh Marshes tip has stopped taking fridges and freezers and bulky bookings are suspended. Stock Road still takes them, and retailers must take yours back.
Two of the three usual ways to get rid of a fridge in Southend have closed at once. Southend-on-Sea City Council has confirmed that the Leigh Marshes household waste recycling centre can no longer accept fridges and freezers, and that bookings for fridge and freezer collections through the bulky waste service are temporarily suspended. Stock Road is the only route left, and the council is asking residents not to use it unless they have to.
The request went out on 7 August, in a notice asking residents to delay disposing of unwanted fridges and freezers where possible. Councillor Cheryl Nevin, Cabinet Member for Civic Pride, said: “This is a national issue affecting councils across the country,” and asked residents to hold off where they safely can while treatment capacity is restored. The council says it is working with its waste contractor SUEZ, Defra, the Environment Agency and industry partners, and has put temporary storage arrangements in place.
What has actually changed
The council’s own recycling centre page now carries the restriction. Leigh Marshes, on Two Tree Island at Leigh-on-Sea, is the closer site for anyone in Leigh, Westcliff or Chalkwell, and it is the one that has stopped taking these items. Stock Road, SS2 5QF, still does.
Neither site takes bookings. Between 1 February and 31 October, Stock Road opens 9am to 5pm on weekdays and 8am to 5pm at weekends, and it is closed on Thursdays. Leigh Marshes keeps the same hours but closes on Wednesdays. Both are for Southend residents only, and staff can ask for a current driving licence or a council tax bill for the current year in your name.
Why fridges and not washing machines
A fridge is not treated like other white goods. Cooling appliances hold refrigerant gases and insulating foams that have to be removed under controlled conditions before the metal and plastic can be recycled, so they can only be handled at a small number of plants with the right depollution equipment.
That network has lost several of those plants in under a year. According to the trade title letsrecycle.com, which has tracked the shortage, Unimetals Recycling’s Newport site went into compulsory liquidation in November 2025, taking roughly 600,000 units a year of treatment capacity out of the system; a fire closed EMR’s Darlaston plant in the West Midlands in February 2026; and a fire at Wiser Recycling’s Thetford site in April 2026 was followed by the loss of its approved treatment status.
The regulator has stepped in on storage rather than treatment. On 31 July the Environment Agency updated RPS 375, a temporary position that lets operators stockpile waste cooling appliances at sites that would not normally be permitted to hold them, under conditions covering stack heights, firebreaks and drainage. The agency says it intends to review that position by 1 April 2027, which is the clearest official signal so far that this is not a matter of days.
Southend is not an outlier. Warwickshire County Council suspended fridge and freezer collections at all its recycling centres on 5 August, two days before Southend’s notice, citing the same national picture.
What it means for you
If the appliance still works, the cheapest answer is to keep it. The council’s request is explicitly to delay where it is practical and safe, and a working fridge that is running is not a problem waiting to be solved. If you are replacing it because it is inefficient rather than broken, that calculation has changed for the next few months.
If it works but you do not want it, pass it on rather than scrap it. Reuse and donation routes are unaffected by any of this, because a working fridge going to another household never enters the treatment queue.
If you are buying a new one, make the retailer take the old one. Under the rules for electrical retailers, a shop that sells you an appliance must offer to take back a waste item of the same type, whether you bought in store, online or by mail order. That in-store service has to be free. A retailer is allowed to charge to cover transport if it is collecting from your home, so ask what the delivery slot includes before you book it, and get the answer in writing.
If you genuinely cannot wait, Stock Road is the site. It is the only council route in Southend currently accepting fridges and freezers, and the drive from Leigh or Westcliff is longer than the one to Leigh Marshes, so allow for it. Our Southend bin collection days guide has the full picture on both tips and on what the kerbside bins take.
The bulky waste service is still running for everything else. Only fridge and freezer bookings are suspended. Sofas, mattresses, washing machines and the rest can still be booked, at £15 for one item, £40 for up to three, £60 for up to five and £35 for a combined item such as a three piece suite, with one free collection per household per service year.
There is no published end date. The council has not given one, and the Environment Agency’s temporary storage position runs well into next year, so the sensible assumption is that the restriction outlasts the summer. We will update this page when Leigh Marshes starts taking these items again.
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