Fewer rubbish collections have been missed in recent weeks, a leading councillor said as he was quizzed about the service.
Two councillors brought up problems – Conservative councillor Anne Meadows and Independent councillor Peter Atkinson – at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting on Thursday (10 July).
Councillor Meadows said that collections had been missed in parts of her ward, Patcham and Hollingbury, for more than a month. She blamed the need for smaller bin lorries in the area’s narrow streets.
Councillor Meadows said: “Rustington Road had no collection for six weeks but that appears to be sorted. However, many more roads are appearing in my inbox of casework.
“This has gone on for some weeks now. Why does it take councillor intervention before anything is done and why does it take so long to get a response even after we’ve asked?”
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said that using smaller vehicles was not just for narrow streets but also for areas where there were access issues.
He said that the smallest vehicles in the council’s fleet were among the oldest, causing issues with some rounds. The council had now hired two more small vehicles.
In May, the cabinet agreed a number of measures to get the service back on track which Councillor Rowkins said had resulted in “dramatic improvements” in the past few weeks.
In response to Councillor Meadows, Councillor Rowkins said: “When there’s a period of significant disruption, customer services have more emails to respond to and it’s not easy to get back to people.
“Now everything has got back to a much better baseline, we are drilling down into what the persistent issues are in locations where there’s weeks of unreliable service.
Councillor Atkinson, who represents North Portslade, wanted assurances that recycling and garden waste collections would be functioning properly before the council starts introducing food waste collections.
In many areas, the garden waste had not been collected for nine weeks and recycling for six weeks, Councillor Atkinson told the meeting of the full council at Hove Town Hall.
He was still receiving the same reasons for the problems that he heard when first elected 10 years ago – shortage of staff, sickness, mechanical breakdown and lack of reliable data on collection.
He said: “Do we honestly think it’s realistic or sensible or achievable that we add another collection – food waste – to those already in place.
“This isn’t a criticism of the majority of environmental services staff and managers who only want to provide a decent service for local people.”
Councillor Rowkins said that the food waste service would be rolled out in phases across Brighton and Hove to ensure any lessons were learnt so the service could adapt to challenges as the process moved forward.
Love thge fact that Councillor Tim Rowkins is still talking in future tense about food waste plans, he’s been talking about them being “rolled out” for months, yet has anyone actually received a food caddy, it’s a struggle to believe any plans they have are on track and that City Clean is in a fit state to start this new service!
The national deadline when the government are MAKING councils across the country to collect food waste by bringing ins new laws (the Environment Act 2021 passed under last government) is 8 months away, so the council have to start city wide food collections by then, by law. Yet from what Tim says in this article, it’s a struggle for the council to keep on top of emails about missed bin collections as it is. Doesn’t instil much confidence!
Brighton and Hove had a pilot food waste setup with a Sussex farmer back in 2012.
Same year a kerbside pilot for small electricals and textiles. With a waste compliance scheme.
Both made by the local community. Both no cost to the council. Both started at ultra low cost.
What happened? Politics and Unions is what happened.
https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2025/05/16/first-food-waste-bins-on-their-way-within-months/
It would be hard for anyone to have a caddy now when they aren’t being issues until September
I think it’s great we finally have a councillor Tim Rowkins that is passionate about recycling.
Unfortunately the problem is that the workforce in the Hollingdean depot have entrenched behaviour, when certain behaviour has developed over years and years it is very difficult to change.
With most being members of GMB whom still behave like they are in the 1980’s.
Lots of people, including several councillors from multiple parties are “passionate” but you’re right that the problems in the city lie deeper. I also think that anyone with any genuine nous on environmental matters really needs to be promoting waste reduction overall and the need for that to be a priority – recycling the waste we produce is one thing, but propomiting policies in the city which mean we produce less in the first place would be good.
Am also concerned that failures in other areas of environmental policy in the city are incredibly damaging – reintroducing toxic weedkiller which harms pollinators is a dreadful move for the council to have made.
That’s a reasonable point, most of the councillors are indeed passionate individuals who want to do their best for the city. I feel we sometimes forget they are people too.
Definitely agree that recycling is just one element, circular economies are the natural next step, for example. Alongside policies that encourage this.
The debate on Roundup continues. I would agree that it is better not to use it at all, but pragmatically I’m also considering the practicalities. If we reduce usage and consider the method of delivery, that’s a good step, in my opinion.
East Brighton will be the 1st side of the City that apparently are Food Waste Bins.
Is that all going to plan so will be collected if Trucks are always late, not scheduled etc.
Feels like on the ground missed collections are on the uprise again from my perspective, in a few areas.
The master of inane platitudes creates another non-sentence
Just because you can’t understand a sentence, doesn’t make it an “platitude” – literal opposite in this case. Rowkins says it is getting better, I disagree.
It certainly is a ‘rubbish’ service…
It seems an improvement is when making it worse is a bit diffucult when too many eyes are watching,