Rubbish removal in East London

Should you use the free council collection first?

For a handful of items, the free council collection is usually the better deal. Two of the five boroughs we cover collect for nothing, and the other three vary a lot. These are the prices and rules as we found them on 4 October 2026:

• Tower Hamlets (external site): free, 2 collections a year of up to 5 items each. Crews don't come into the home, and high-rise residents must bring items down to the ground floor.
• Newham (external site): free from September 2026, 3 collections a year of up to 6 items each, as announced on 13 August 2026.
• Hackney: the council's own page shows no prices, so check with Hackney before you book.
• Barking and Dagenham (external site): charges residents who aren't council tenants, with caps on each type of item. We couldn't confirm the price, so check with the council.
• Havering (external site): £71.50 for 1 to 3 items plus £18.50 for each extra one, ground floor only, nothing over 6ft, and the fee isn't refundable.

A load from us starts to make sense once the pile runs past the free allowance, or nobody in the flat can get it down the stairs. With man and van rubbish removal there's no van to hire and nothing to carry yourself: the crew loads the lot and takes it away in one visit.

What if your flat is above the ground floor?

Census 2021 (external site) counts 80.7% of Tower Hamlets homes and 60.4% of Hackney homes as purpose-built flats, and that's exactly where the council services stop short. Tower Hamlets' free collection needs high-rise residents to bring every item to the ground floor themselves, and Havering's paid one is ground floor only as well.

Our two-person crew carries everything down and loads it, and that loading time is already part of the load price. It suits an end-of-tenancy flat clearance, with private renting at 38.5% of homes in Newham and 38.1% in Tower Hamlets.

What does crossing the Thames add to an East London job?

Crossing the Thames adds nothing to your price. Every route from Chislehurst to East London crosses the river, through the Blackwall or Silvertown tunnels or on the Woolwich Ferry, and Romford and the rest of Havering are likely reached over the Dartford Crossing. We pay any tunnel or crossing toll ourselves, and there's no travel surcharge.

By road it's about 15 km from Chislehurst to E14 and about 41 km to Romford, and an East London load costs the same as one in Bromley. No congestion charge, parking fee or fine is passed on to you. Whatever the route, the price we give you is confirmed before work starts.

Who should take your rubbish away in Hackney?

Your rubbish should go with a registered waste carrier who gives you a receipt, because Hackney logged 31,042 fly-tipping incidents in 2024/25, the fourth-highest count in England on Defra figures (external site), and Tower Hamlets fines fly-tippers £1,000. You can ask for the carrier number before anything is loaded, and every job from us comes with a waste transfer note and a receipt.

We take builders' waste and rip-out waste by the load as well, and heavy mixed rubble, soil and hardcore is £360 plus VAT for up to 15 cubic yards or 1,200kg. Asbestos that has already been removed can go if you tell us about it first, but chemicals and other hazardous waste can't. We also clear fly-tipped rubbish dumped on private land.