Rubbish and recycling crews were criticised for missing collections during the recent snow and ice but several were injured falling on slippery surfaces and one was hit by a moving vehicle.
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins said that crews were heroic for going out at 5am in the icy conditions as he praised improvements in the service and explained some of the recent challenges.
Councillor Rowkins, Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said: “Five of our operatives between the Friday and Sunday, when that ice kicked in, slipped and injured themselves.
“One of them wasn’t a slip. One of them was hit by a moving vehicle because of the weather.
“They do hard and often dangerous work and they deserve our thanks and support and our gratitude and they will be key to the continued improvements and success of the service going forward.”
He spoke out at an overview and scrutiny meeting and said that new electronic systems that tracked rubbish and recycling collections were giving a true picture of how many were missed.
A report to the council’s cabinet today (Thursday 22 January) said that the performance of the collection service had improved.
No detailed figures were included in the report but it said that most weeks about 99 per cent of the 194,000 collections were achieved during the week, sometimes higher.
Data requested by the Local Democracy Reporting Service for the past 10 weeks showed a high point of 99.674 per cent of collections achieved in the week beginning Monday 15 December.
The collection figures include communal bins and garden waste as well as household kerbside rubbish and recycling.
The percentages suggest that just over 630 collections were missed across the board during that week.
Electronic data collection meant that rubbish and recycling crews could record complete collections and what had been missed for reasons such as vehicles blocking a road or bins not being left out for emptying.
Councillor Rowkins told the council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee yesterday (Wednesday 21 January) that the council knew what had been missed as soon as the crew were unable to empty a bin.
The lowest collection rate in November was 98.5 per cent. Last month performance dipped a few times. It was 93.9 per cent in the week beginning Monday 8 December.
After Christmas, the collection rate fell to 88 per cent in the week beginning Monday 29 December and fell further to 82.5 per cent in the week beginning Monday 5 January – just short of 34,000 missed collections.
Councillor Rowkins said that there were signs of improvement, with 95 per cent of rounds collected last week and he hoped that they would be back up to 99 per cent this week.
Although the council said that performance had improved, the figures were complied differently this time last year.
From November 2024 to the end of last January, the council recorded collections reported as missed by the public or those noted on paper by the rubbish and recycling crews.
This difference in the method of monitoring made it impossible to draw a true like-for-like comparison.
But over the same period a year ago, the fewest reported missed collections was 341 in the week beginning Monday 11 November 2024. The figure included communal bins, garden waste and kerbside rubbish and recycling.
In the week beginning Monday 6 January 2025 the number of reported missed collections peaked at 3,304 while the rolling three-month average was 963.
Brighton and Hove Independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh told the committee that she would “crack out the champagne” if there was a week in her Rottingdean and West Saltdean ward without any form of missed collection.
Councillor Rowkins said that the council was “alive” to the issues facing West Saltdean and was focused on improving the service in the east of the city.
Conservative councillor Alistair McNair said that he and his fellow Patcham and Hollingbury councillors Anne Meadows and Carol Theobald were inundated with complaints by email and on Facebook from residents over Christmas and the new year.
People told the councillors that some streets in their ward had not had collections for “weeks and weeks”.
Councillor McNair said: “You can hear the exasperation. Why was it so bad? We’re told by officers there’s been a lack of staff and vehicles.
“So it doesn’t matter what real-time collection data you have if you don’t have the staff. Was the weather bad? There was one day of snow. The buses kept running. So why not refuse collections?”
Commercial and domestic waste and recycling collection is possible without the need for staff to leave their vehicle. This would be driver only operation and require different equipment. It works in towns in the USA and Spain that I have seen. Why doesn’t the Council get a third-party supplier to at least test the process on a few rounds in Brighton and Hove? If successful it would mean fewer accidents involving staff.
Those systems rely on residents putting their bins in the correct location and in the correct position on the kerb side for them to be picked up.
And for cars not to be parked in the way.
Not the ones I have seen and used in Spain.
They do already have that. Never noticed the massive black bins in central Brighton and hove. Usually overflowing due to vehicle breakdowns…
No. The communal wheeled bin collections in Brighton e.g. Spring Gardens, use 2 crew per vehicle and require one to get out of the cab and move the bin to the lorry.
No the communal bins do not have wheels.
They all have 2 crew because someone decided to climb into a bin and go to sleep about 10 years ago. He was tragically killed. Also people like to put stupid things in the bin that could break the trucks
Along Arundel Road, just by the French Convalescent Home, if I remember?
Sounds like a massive gritting failure on the council’s part as well as a missed bin failure if the councillor is correct and staff were placed at risk.
Workers shouldn’t need to be heroic and injure themselves. The council should be making sure that their working conditions are safe and if the roads were hazardous because of ice the council should have done a better job gritting them.
Not every road gets gritted and to be frank it’s a ridiculous expectation both practically and financially
The gritting plan is availalable on the council website
I always think there’s an element of self-preservation that we common folks should employ. So my road doesn’t get automatically gritted, but there’s a grit bin on it. I went and did it last time. Plenty of people were talking about it in the neighbourhood chats, and not one person came out to help – in fact, someone complained that I hadn’t done the end of their particular patch, which was completely out of the way of everyone else.
Whilst I don’t hold it against them, no one forced me to be out there; it does highlight to me how easy it is to complain, yet how little people help themselves or think beyond their own personal bubble.
The issue is sometimes the gritter drivers are the ones who drive the bin lorries thus their hours are rightly limited. Another problem is the fleet is largely aging, the replacements unreliable and not fit for purpose. The main obstacle remains lazy people who don’t care about their carbon footprint.
Next question. Why does Cityclean own and maintain its own vehicles. It could lease/hire vehicles from third-party suppliers. It would need a very tight and acutely monitored contract, with big penalties for lack compliance, but it could be done, and is done elsewhere.
Service is contracted out to Conway, so what are you going on about the vehicle fleet?
When the council had it in house it was lease hire anyway so they were all under 5 years old…
Now it’s contracted out the dustcart drivers don’t do the gritting…
They do a great job no matter the weather ,they have working condition problems every day,,but they get over it without to much of a do,those who criticise maybe do a day on the bins,and I guarantee you will have a different view of these crews,when living in glasshouses dont throw stones
Spot on. One of the major working conditions they encounter every day is the disconnect between the management and the workforce although I understand that this has improved recently with new appointments more open to co-operation.