Six complaints an hour over uncollected rubbish

MISSED bin collections are bringing six complaints an hour as families wait for more than a fortnight for their rubbish to be taken away.

City of Edinburgh Council has drastically cut waste collection in recent years, from a weekly to a fortnightly pick-up, with smaller wheelie bins and fines of up to £50 for ‘overflowing’ bins with the lids pushed up just a few inches.

But binmen are failing to collect rubbish and recycling boxes on time, according to the council’s own figures.

Household complaints have soared more than 50 per cent in a year, from 33,976 to 52,911 in 2015-16. In March alone, the council was contacted more than 3,700 times by unhappy customers, whose council tax should cover having their refuse taken away.

Tory councillor Nick Cook, who requested the figures, said last night: ‘The council continues to play down public concern at the poor standard of city waste collection services.

‘But these staggering figures show that, for an increasing number of residents, the service is simply a load of rubbish.’

City of Edinburgh Council has partly blamed the rise in complaints on pilot schemes to roll out recycling to flats and tenements, which have seen separate paper and packaging banks rebranded as mixed recycling bins; fortnightly blue box glass collections replaced with onstreet glass bins; and kerbside recycling collections replaced with communal mixed recycling bins. Households in the city can be expected to put different containers out for three separate collections a week.

The council said complaints may have risen because people are being encouraged to contact the council online through its website and social media.

Council environment convener Lesley Hinds said a kerbside recycling service rolled out to more than 140,000 homes had increased collections and the potential for missing them, although it had increased recycling rates and saved money on landfill costs.

She added: ‘Each week approximately 480,000 collections take place in the city, so these complaints account for just 0.2 per cent of the total collections undertaken in a year.’