Bury Christmas bin collections: 2026 dates due in December

Bury Council has not published its Christmas and New Year 2026 bin collection dates, and it never does this early. The last three announcements came on 20 December 2023, 19 December 2024 and 19 December 2025. Christmas Day 2026 is a Friday, so the rounds most likely to move are the Friday collections on 25 December and 1 January. This page sets out exactly what the council did last year, so you can plan, and it will be updated the day the 2026 dates appear.

The quick answer

• 2026 dates: not published yet. Bury Council announced last year’s changes on 19 December 2025, and the year before on 19 December 2024.
• Last year’s pattern: collections due on 23, 24 and 25 December went out one day early, Boxing Day’s round moved to the following Monday, and the two New Year rounds slipped one day later.
• Brown bins stopped for two weeks, 22 December to 4 January, and the tips were open every day except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

What Bury did last Christmas

The council’s 19 December 2025 announcement covered grey, blue and green bins. Every round was collected; nothing was skipped.

Three other things in the same release still apply:

• Bins go out by 7am with the lid fully closed.
• Extra rubbish and recycling goes to a household waste and recycling centre, which the council said would be “open every day except 25 December and 1 January”. Our tip opening times page has the hours and the van permit rule.
• Plastic pots, tubs and trays go in the blue bin, not the grey one. Flatten boxes and squash the air out of bagged rubbish to make the space last.

Councillor Alan Quinn, the cabinet member for environment, also warned that the council “cannot rule out snow and ice or winter illness impacting our workforce”. If a collection is missed over the holiday, the council’s advice was to leave the bin out.

What to expect in 2026

The bank holidays fall differently this year. Christmas Day is Friday 25 December, Boxing Day is a Saturday, so its substitute bank holiday is Monday 28 December, and New Year’s Day is Friday 1 January 2027.

The council’s online bin collection calendar does not yet reflect any of that. When we checked it for our bin collection days page in August, a third of the addresses we tested still listed Friday 25 December or Friday 1 January as an ordinary collection day. That is the unadjusted rota, and the council amends it in December. Check the lookup again in the week before Christmas rather than trusting what it shows today.

The pattern has been consistent for three years: the 2024 changes paused brown bins from 25 December to 5 January and moved the other bins around the two bank holidays, and the 2023 arrangement ran grey, green and blue collections one day later than usual from 25 December to 5 January. In 2024 the council also sent a general reminder on 20 November, a month before the dates.

Brown bins and Christmas trees

The brown food and garden bin was suspended for a fortnight in each of the last two years: 22 December to 4 January in 2025-26, and 25 December to 5 January the year before. Food waste has to stay in the brown bin during the pause, so make room for it before the last pre-Christmas collection.

Real trees have three routes, set out on the council’s Christmas waste page:

• Brown bin: chop it so it fits with the lid fully closed, and take off the lights, decorations and wooden base first.
• Recycling centre: any Greater Manchester centre takes real and artificial trees.
• Bury Hospice collection: in January 2026 volunteers collected trees from homes between Friday 9 and Sunday 11 January for a suggested £20 donation, with registration closing at midnight on 5 January. The trees were chipped for a golf course or burned as biomass. The hospice has not yet published dates for January 2027.

Tips over Christmas

Every Street in Bury and Cemetery Road in Radcliffe are run for the council by Recycle for Greater Manchester, whose centre listings show both closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day only. The council’s own recycling centre page gives winter hours of 8am to 6pm. Vans, pick-ups and twin-axle trailers need a permit applied for two working days ahead, which matters if you are planning a post-Christmas clear-out in a hired van.

Missed collections over the holiday

The council’s normal rule is to wait until after 5pm on collection day and report the missed bin before 1pm the next day. Over Christmas it asks residents to leave the bin out instead, because crews catch up as they can. The reporting route and what happens next for each bin colour is on our bin collection days page.

What is still to be confirmed

The 2026 revised dates, the brown bin pause and the January 2027 tree collection. On past form all three appear between 11 and 20 December. We will check the council’s newsroom weekly from the start of December and update this page the same day.