A supermarket branch has agreed to add wheel-locking technology to its trolleys after a rise in the number of them being abandoned.

In less than a month, nearly 250 Asda and Aldi shopping trolleys were dumped in and around Swanley.

Since the last week of December, Swanley Town Council (STC) said it had collected 210 Asda trolleys and 34 from Aldi.

While Aldi’s carts have wheel-lock technology – a system that locks the wheels once they exit the stores car park, meaning they cannot be pushed further and across the town – STC said Asda turned the “mag-locks” off when the pandemic started.

After a meeting with STC yesterday (Tuesday, January 30), the supermarket has agreed to use the technology again.

Ryan Hayman, CEO of the town council, told KentOnline: “We had a very productive meeting with Asda.

“They have agreed to implement the new technology that we had been pushing for and this is expected to be in place by the end of February.

“We are organising a follow up for mid-March to see how well the mag-lock technology system is working.

"In the immediate they have agreed to share an information poster which I hope to get in time for the next town magazine print.

“The store has also increased the number of collections by Collex [an abandoned trolley retrieval service], but we are not stopping with our service we just hope that this will complement them until such a time as we no longer need to collect and fine the supermarket.”

In 2020, Swanley became one of the first councils to receive powers from Sevenoaks District Council and the government to pick up trolleys and recover the costs from the retailers for doing so.

In December, STC announced it would be increasing the charges and will be contracting a dedicated individual to collect more abandoned trolleys. The costs for this are then directly passed onto the supermarkets.

An Asda spokesperson said: “We will be working constructively with [the council] to resolve this issue.

“In the meantime, anybody who spots an abandoned trolley can directly report it using the Collex app so that it can be collected and put to better use.

“We would ask that customers please return their trolleys once they have finished using them.”