Filled in a Flash: Burnhill's Community Skips Were a Hit

When we asked Burnhill what it needed, a community skip initiative was one of the answers that came back loud and clear. So that's exactly what we did.

Thanks to £2,500 from South Lanarkshire Council's Participatory Budgeting fund, the High Backs ran its first ever community skip initiative from Wednesday 1st to Sunday 5th April 2026. Two skips were available at Rutherglen Glencairn FC's car park - just a minute's walk from the garden - with a planned opening of 12–4pm and 6–8pm each day, with staff and volunteers on hand throughout.

The community's response said everything. People came out in force, some hauling timber and other bulky items down on foot using their wheelie bins - a brilliantly practical solution that told its own story about how much people wanted to make use of this. By the second day, Thursday, both skips were completely full by 1pm, just one hour after opening. The High Backs closed the skips for the remainder of the day and arranged for additional skips to arrive for day three. Sure enough, the skips were back - with the gates open from 11.30am to 3pm and they were available until Easter Sunday so the whole community could get good use of them.

Members of Burnhill MENding Minds also got involved, helping out on site and taking the opportunity to clear pre-existing fly-tipping from around the local area.

We're enormously grateful to Rutherglen Glencairn FC for lending us their car park, and to everyone who came out and made this such a success. It's a brilliant example of what a community can do when it's given the right support.

Recent changes to waste collection have made it harder for people without cars or means to dispose of bulky items. This initiative was about making sure that wasn't a barrier for people in Burnhill - and judging by the response, it was needed and very much welcomed.

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