Mid Suffolk District Council - Date Parsing Error

[aaronchidgey]

Name of Council

Mid Suffolk

Issue Information

The Mid Suffolk website is now returning date strings with a leading comma and inconsistent spacing (e.g., , Wed 29 Apr 2026). This causes the strptime logic to fail with ValueError: unconverted data remains.

I have manually patched this by using re.search to extract the date. This ignores the leading comma and any strange spacing. I changed line 124 of uk_bin_collection/uk_bin_collection/councils/MidSuffolkDistrictCouncil.py to the below:

"import re
date_match = re.search(r"(\d{1,2}\s+\w{3}\s+\d{4})", date_str)
if date_match:
collection_date = datetime.strptime(date_match.group(1), "%d %b %Y")`

After this it is now working but will obviously break with the next update unless fixed."

Verification

• I searched for similar issues at https://github.com/robbrad/UKBinCollectionData/issues?q=is:issue and found no duplicates
• I have checked my address/postcode/UPRN works on the council's website
• I have provided a detailed explanation of the issue as well as steps to replicate the issue
• I understand that this project is run by volunteer contributors therefore completion of this issue cannot be guaranteed