‘Bins champions’ to be voice of taxpayers

BINS ‘champions’ have been embedded in the city’s three largest waste collection depots to ensure complaints are tackled following a year of turmoil.

The staff, from the council’s own call centre, have been sent to tips at Holford Drive, in Perry Barr, Lifford Lane, in Kings Norton, and Redfern Road in Tyseley.

Their job is to flag up ongoing problems with missed collections and missing wheelie bins.

Call centre operators dealt with 169,000 calls about bins and flytipping during the year to April, which included the three-month bin strike and December’s heavy snow. But there are concerns that complaints have not been acted upon after being sent to depots, so now the services have teamed up to share more information.

Deirdre Alden, Conservative councillor for Edgbaston, told the council’s scrutiny committee how she was routinely contacted by residents who had raised missed bin collections on multiple occasions, but their complaints were not tackled.

“I’ve had people saying to me ‘I called six times and I have still got waste outside my house’,” she said.

It was always the same areas being missed, such as cul-desacs, corner houses and homes which are isolated between commercial properties.

“The depots know the homes which always get left,” she added.

The waste collection department is still undergoing a major overhaul in the light of last summer’s devastating bin strike.

Assistant director of customer service Paula Buckley said that the call centre was working closely with the bins service to address problems. Measures include sending the ‘customer service resolution champions’ to work at the depots.

“We are getting much more detailed information about people who are calling us back to report that their bin’s not been collected,” she added.

Birmingham’s troubled bin service is on course for a budget overspend of at least £1.5 million following last year’s strike. A failure to implement a deal struck with the Unite Union to end the 2017 dispute means that the city council is still spending £300,000 more a month on overtime than planned.

And council Labour leader Ian Ward has told colleagues that it is likely that the over spend will go on until September.

The deal struck was supposed to see binmen move for four to five day working and for some to be given new duties.

But Labour cabinet member for clean streets Majid Mahmood (Lab, Hodge Hill) said: “Collection crews are still operating a compressed working week...there are a number of actions that still need to put in place.”