All ten Dorset Council recycling centres open daily, 9am to 5pm until 30 September and shorter hours from 1 October. Four need a booking for every visit.
Dorset Council’s ten household recycling centres are open every day of the week, 9am to 5pm, and every site’s listing carries the same warning: “Opening times change on 1 October and 1 April to reflect daylight hours.” In previous winters the council’s Christmas notices gave the winter hours as 9am to 4pm. The centres open on every bank holiday except three: Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
The rule that catches people out is not the hours but the booking. Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Sherborne and Wimborne need a booked slot for every visit, even on foot or by bike. The other six only need a booking for DIY waste or asbestos. This page has the ten sites, the hours, the booking rules and the Christmas position, all from the council’s own listings on 25 September 2026.
The quick answer
- Hours: 9am to 5pm daily until 30 September, then winter hours from 1 October. The council’s listings do not print the winter hours in advance; its Christmas notices in past years gave 9am to 4pm.
- Closed on three days a year only: 25 December, 26 December and 1 January. Open on every other bank holiday.
- Book before you go to Dorchester (Louds Mill), Shaftesbury, Sherborne or Wimborne. At Blandford, Bridport, Portland, Swanage, Wareham and Weymouth you only book for DIY waste or asbestos. Slots are 30 minutes. Online at recycling centre bookings or by phone on 01305 221037.
The ten centres
| Centre | Where | Booking | Asbestos |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blandford | Blandford Heights (new site due December 2026) | DIY waste and asbestos only | Yes |
| Bridport (Broomhills) | Broomhills, Bridport | DIY waste only | No |
| Dorchester (Louds Mill) | St Georges Road, Dorchester DT1 1PE | Every visit | No |
| Portland | Portland | DIY waste only | No |
| Shaftesbury | Wincombe Business Park, Warminster Road, Shaftesbury SP7 9QJ | Every visit | No |
| Sherborne | Sherborne | Every visit | No |
| Swanage | Prospect Business Park, Victoria Avenue, Swanage BH19 1EJ | DIY waste only | No |
| Wareham | Westminster Road Industrial Estate, Wareham BH20 4SN | DIY waste and asbestos only | Yes |
| Weymouth (Lodmoor) | Lodmoor, Weymouth | DIY waste and asbestos only | Yes |
| Wimborne | Wimborne | Every visit | No |
Every one of the ten is listed as “Open daily, 9am to 5pm” on the council’s find a recycling centre page. Each site’s own page adds the line “Opening times change on 1 October and 1 April to reflect daylight hours” and “All our recycling centres are open on bank holidays (excluding Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day)”. Business and commercial waste is refused at all of them.
How the booking works
The council’s booking page is explicit that at Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Sherborne and Wimborne “visitors accessing these sites by foot or bike are also required to book”. Each slot is 30 minutes long; you can arrive at any point in it but “you can only make one visit during that time”. Once booked, the confirmation message carries a link to change or cancel.
At the other six centres you need a slot only if you are bringing DIY waste, which the council defines by its free allowance: up to 16 bags over a maximum of four visits in any four-week period, a bag being a standard 25-litre rubble sack. A bath or glass shower screen counts as four bags. Anything above the allowance is charged, and the charges page has the rates. Asbestos always needs a booking and only Blandford, Wareham and Weymouth take it.
If you live outside the Dorset Council area, which includes Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, you can still use the sites but pay “a non-refundable fee of £8.50 for each visit” and cannot book by phone. Vans, pick-ups and large trailers need a permit; check the site page before you load up.
Christmas and New Year
The three closure days are fixed: Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. In 2026 that is Friday 25 December, Saturday 26 December and Friday 1 January 2027. The substitute bank holiday on Monday 28 December is not a closure day under the rule the council prints on every listing, which excludes only the three named days, so the sites should open as normal that Monday. We will confirm that against the council’s Christmas notice when it is published, normally in late November or early December.
The council’s previous Christmas notices, such as the October 2022 one, have said that “household recycling centres are open from 9am to 4pm daily, except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day” and that real and artificial Christmas trees can be taken to any of them, because the council does not collect trees from the kerbside. Cut up, a real tree also goes in the garden waste bin. Kerbside collections slip by a day after Christmas and again after New Year; the dates are on our bin collection days page, which also has the two-extra-sacks rule for the first rubbish collection after Christmas.
Expect queues at Weymouth and Dorchester on 27 December and 2 January, the first open days after each closure. At Dorchester you cannot join a queue without a slot, so book the day before.
Blandford is moving
The council says the existing Blandford site at Blandford Heights is an adapted grain store holding fourteen vehicles at a time, and it closes while containers are emptied. The replacement Blandford Waste Management Centre is due for completion by December 2026. If the switch happens over the winter, the address, hours and booking rule for Blandford may change; check that page before a first visit to the new site.
Sources
- Dorset Council, find a recycling centre
- Dorset Council, Dorchester Household Recycling Centre (Louds Mill)
- Dorset Council, recycling centre bookings
- Dorset Council, recycling centre charges
- Dorset Council, Blandford Waste Management Centre
- Dorset Council, Christmas and New Year recycling and waste collections, 25 October 2022
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