Coverage and sources

BinDayBuddy is an independent site run by Towpath Digital Ltd. We find your council from your postcode. For 187 councils we read the collection days from the council’s own system; for the rest, we link to its own bin day page. We are not a council, and no council has endorsed this site.

Coverage today

264Councils linkedWe link to their own bin day page

187With dates hereWe read their collection system

0With remindersReminders are not open yet

Council links from GOV.UK’s list of council services, downloaded and each link opened on 14 October 2026. Councils with dates are the ones whose system answered our test on 20 October 2026. Northern Ireland’s councils are not in GOV.UK’s list yet, so we cannot answer for BT postcodes.

How we keep answers honest

Corrections

If you tell us a link or a council name is wrong, we check it against GOV.UK and the council’s own site before changing anything.

Tell us about a mistake

Tell us what we showed and what is right. We check it against the council’s own site.

Email privacy@towpath.digital with the postcode, what we showed and what is right. A person reads every message. We use your email address only to reply, and delete the message once it is dealt with.

Your information

A lookup needs no account. We keep a council’s answer for up to 12 hours so we don’t ask it twice, then delete it. There are no accounts or reminders yet. Full details are in the privacy notice.

How we read bin days

We find your council from your postcode, using the ONS Postcode Directory.
Most councils give bin days for each property, not each postcode. The ONS UPRN Directory lists the properties in your postcode by their reference number only, with no names or addresses. Some are homes; some are shops, offices or blocks of flats. We ask your council’s own system about up to six of them, two at a time, and stop as soon as two agree.
When two homes agree on every bin they both have, we show those bins for your postcode and say how many homes we checked. If only one home answers, we say that too. If they differ, we say so and link to the council, rather than guess.
A few councils give their days for the postcode itself, and a few need your house number or name. We ask you for it, send it to that council’s system with your postcode, and don’t write it into any log.
We keep each answer for up to 12 hours so we don’t ask a council twice, then delete it. We ask any one council no more than two questions at a time, half a second apart.
If a council’s system keeps failing, we stop asking it for half an hour and show its own link instead. We drop any date that has passed, so we never show an old one.
We don’t get past any council’s protection against automated visits. If a council blocks us, it gets a link.

Licences and credits

Postcode data: Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0 (ONS Postcode Directory, August 2026; ONS UPRN Directory, September 2026).

Council links: Local authority services (GOV.UK Local Links), Government Digital Service, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Bin days: read from each council’s own collection system, using the open-source UKBinCollectionData scripts (MIT licence). The days belong to each council, and its own information always wins.