Agency staff not turning up for work blamed on bin problem in Coventry

“The fact that it is going to be the same again next year I’m just waiting for January next year for the phone calls.”

Cllr Kindy Sandhu added: “They failed in their contracts.

“If people didn’t turn up they failed in their contracts.

“It sounds like you are going to work with the same agency again, so how do you ensure the same problem doesn’t happen again?”

Ms Elliott said they have moved to a new agency and last Christmas was the first time they had used them, which “made a difference”.

She said: “In terms of why are we doing it again this year - those challenges exist in whatever model you do.

“As soon as we move away from using our own staff, we are always going to have that issue of relying on other people, whether that be agency.

“I am not going to promise Christmas will ever be 100 per cent okay, while we are relying on non-council employees that is always an issue.”

But she insisted she makes “no excuses” for them and will be holding a meeting to discuss the Christmas issues.

She also confirmed the council did not pay for agency staff who failed to show.

“Had all of the agency staff that we brought in turned up the issues may have been very different,” she added.

“That is what it is and we will learn from it.”

Cllr Sandhu added: “We have to hold these organisations to account. We are not a soft touch because we are a council.

“We have to demonstrate that if they are not meeting the contract, they have penalties to pay and they have to go over and above to assure us that this is not going to happen again.”

The council saved around £120,000 on its waste collection services by closing over Christmas last year.

In 2018, it collected 8,061 tonnes of waste, costing £50,823, compared to 8,476 tonnes of waste in 2017, costing £171,307 - including £159,000 in agency staff.

There were just under 250 complaints and around 2,500 missed bins last year, compared to more than 400 complaints in 2017, including 4,500 missed bins, but this was largely down to poor weather.

Ms Elliott added: “I would like to think 2018 was a blip year, the agency’s first year, we will look at that and learn from it.”

She confirmed waste collections will not run again this Christmas, garden waste collections will be suspended, and green bins will be collected the week before and after Christmas.

Additional recycling bags will be issued but collected by a regular crew and not a separate team, after Ms Elliott admitted it “caused confusion”.