South Holland District Council has apologised and launched an independent inquiry amid thousands of waste items not being collected.
A meeting of the authority last night (Wednesday, May 5) was told many members of the public were unaware of changes to days of collections relating to bank holidays and garden waste collections.
Previously, on weeks where there were public holidays, every households’ bin collection moved to the next day.
But now only those due to have their waste collected on the holiday itself will change.
For those, waste will instead be collected the Saturday before.
One of those who didn’t know about the new policy coming into effect for May Day earlier this month was Coun Chris Brewis.
“In my ward there was thousands and thousands of bags being put out on the Monday night, including mine,” he said. “I didn’t even know the date had changed.
“I took mine back in to my house but lots of people didn’t.”
SHDC’S portfolio holder for environmental services Coun Jim Astill said in relation to a later question by Coun Laura Eldridge: “We’ve had long discussions about how bank holiday collections would work.
“The slipper day we’ve used in more recent years impacts every household. They all slip back one day.
“We felt changing just those that have their collections on the Monday would mean only one group of residents would be impacted. The remainder of the district would be untouched.
“Those arrangements are in place for the next bank holiday.
“When new bins are rolled out later in the year we’re making changes to how the crews operate.
“Members will note those collections will take place on bank holiday Mondays with the exceptions of Christmas Day, Easter Monday and others to be confirmed.”
Coun Astill continued that the council used agency staff ‘which can be quite problematic to get in on a quicker basis’ and was ‘looking at other options and putting additional resources in place’.
The apology and inquiry announced at the meeting by Coun Astill though came in relation to the waste services.
He told councillors that 2,500 residents (20 per cent of subscribers to the service) had been affected by a change of day in collections which included missed collections and ‘incorrect information on the council’s website’.
“During work to activate these routes there was an error which caused disruption to this group of customers. Some areas impacted were impacted more than others and I apologise to those impacted.
“As a result of this disruption we’ll also be extending the garden waste subscription by providing an additional collection, but please bear with us as it’s a manual process and will take some time.
“We’ve conducted an independent review into the expansion project and it has been agreed it will be presented to a special meeting.”
Given the issues, Coun Brewis asked about the move to wheelie bins scheduled to happen in the autumn asking for hard copies to be handed out to all residents or ‘chaos’ is going to ensue’.
“We’re looking at how we communicate all aspects of the change and one of these is a time table we can issue to residents,” Coun Astill said. “We need to look at all aspects of communication correctly.”
