A councillor has called for a “root and branch” review of the council’s garden waste service after persistent missed collections.
Independent councillor Peter Atkinson, who represents North Portslade, has contacted Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s cabinet member responsible for the service.
Councillor Atkinson has also written to senior managers in Brighton and Hove City Council’s environmental services team, formerly known as Cityclean, who run the service day to day.
He said: “It is the issue I currently get most contact about in North Portslade – and people are beginning to vote with their feet and unsubscribe from the service.”
There have been repeated missed collections in North Portslade for many months, he said, and there seems to be no proper administration or organisation of the service.
It is one of the only collection services in the city that residents pay for – it costs £102 a year – but residents say that their bins are regularly missed.
They complain that there appears to be no meaningful way to report this and arrange a catch-up collection.
Some residents have gone six to eight weeks without a collection, Councillor Atkinson said.
The subscription scheme was changed a few months ago, in June, and this “apparently changed the way in which a missed collection would be recompensed for”.
In the past, the annual subscription was just extended but there is now meant to be financial compensation.
No proper communication has been sent out about this, however, and residents struggle to get any information back from the council’s garden waste office.
Councillor Atkinson said: “I’m sure the staff are doing their best but there is clearly something very wrong with the way the whole service is organised and run from the central office to the collection crews themselves.
“Some people may think that this is just a minor issue but it’s annoying and frustrating to pay for a service and then not receive it, with the brown bin remaining full to the brim for weeks on end.”
The council said: “We recognise that some residents have experienced missed garden waste collections and understand the frustration this can cause, particularly as this is a paid-for service.
“We are currently carrying out a detailed review of the service to better understand the issues being reported, including collection performance, customer contact, and operational processes.
“This work will help us identify where improvements are needed and ensure the service meets the standards residents expect.
“Our crews continue to work hard to deliver services across the city and where problems have occurred, we are committed to learning from them and making improvements.
“We will use the findings from this review to strengthen the resilience and reliability of the service.
“We would encourage residents who experience ongoing issues to contact the council so that individual cases can be investigated and, where appropriate, resolved.”
I did contact the council twice by email and asked about compensation. Got an acknowledgment but no reply
Sounds like breach of contract if residents pay extra for this service and the council fail to deliver the service paid for. Residents affected might do well to consider both getting legal advice in consumer law so they can claw back money paid for the service they’ve not had, and take complaints to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
Concerns have been raised about garden waste collections being missed loads for at least the last 18 months, residents paying for the service should be refunded for ALL collections missed and pursue via formal complaints and legal avenues if the council do not do that: https://www.lgo.org.uk/make-a-complaint/fact-sheets/environment-and-waste/waste-and-refuse
‘The council said: “We recognise that some residents have experienced missed garden waste collections and understand the frustration this can cause, particularly as this is a paid-for service.”
This is the problem right there, councils that can’t grasp that ALL services are paid for – by council tax payers – a huge disconnect on where the money they spend comes from, that means they don’t care, act like they are doing council taxpayers a favour, award themselves medals and rewards for simply for doing their jobs badly, will happily splash money on pet projects and vanity projects.
As why worry about wasting money, more will magically appear as it always does
Good luck with getting anything useful back from cllr Rowkins!
There were a number of private services but they stopped or folded because the council by not having to charge VAT were able to ‘sell’ the service cheaper.
Also as the volumes of waste passed onto Veolia were so low as to make that contract
– more expensive for us
– more capacity and profit for Veolia
Adding green waste and taking the textile banks at council sites from charities became all part of making a shit service appear less
shitter
It would be helpful if people on low incomes could pay monthly for the service as paying for a year is out of their financial commitments