Somerset Council’s recycling sites in Wellington and Bridgwater will remain open seven days a week until Taunton Recycling Site can safely re-open.

Wellington is usually closed on Mondays and Tuesdays but will open Monday to Sunday. Bridgwater usually closes on Wednesdays but is also open seven days next week.

Visitors are warned that Wellington is experiencing an influx of visitors on Wednesday’s, the site’s previous first opening day of the week. If possible, Taunton visitors are asked to avoid this site and use Bridgwater Recycling Site instead, which is seeing less visitors on a Wednesday.

Teams from Taunton recycling site have been redeployed to help at Wellington and Bridgwater and will meet and greet visitors during busier periods.

The site in Priorswood will remain closed until further notice.

At this stage, the cause of the blaze is not known and due to a small fire still smouldering it is uncertain of when the site can be reopened.

The site averages around 700 visitors a day and residents who would usually use it are asked to either:

• Hold on to their recycling if it can wait
• Put it in their kerbside recycling if it is the right kind of material
• Try one of the council’s other 15 sites if it is waste that urgently needs to go

Local sites details can be found online: Find your nearest recycling centre.

Somerset Council has 16 recycling sites across the county which are managed by Biffa on the Council’s behalf. Staff from Taunton have been redeployed to provide the extra opening in Wellington and Bridgwater.

The building, where recycling is sorted for sending out to be reprocessed, is considered structurally unsafe.

Fire services were called to the site in Priorswood in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday 3 October and up to 60 firefighters and seven appliances were involved in tackling the blaze.