Put off over missed rubbish collections
Repeated complaints about overflowing bins
Buckinghamshire Council has issued an apology to Burnham residents after its contractor failed to consistently collect household bins for several weeks.
The apology follows complaints from residents who reported that the new waste and recycling collection programme from the contractor, Veolia, failed to start smoothly on May 20.
Burnham’s allocated pick-up day changed from Monday to Friday leaving many roads with bins uncollected – and residents feeling that their paid-for services aren’t being fulfilled.
One resident, who did not wish to be named, reported that bins had been ‘left off’ of the collection more than once
in their area, leaving Aldbourne Road, Lent Rise and Stomp Road with overflowing bins and confusing communication from Buckinghamshire Council as to when they would be collected.
Another resident, Dr Arshad Jarral, who lives in Stafford Close, logged several telephone and online complaints.
“It’s just not making any sense. One week they collected the black bin and not the green bin.
“It has been ongoing for six weeks yet every time I talk to them they say: ‘We’ll pass this message on to the management’ or ‘someone will get back to you’ – and they never do.”
He also added that uncollected bins have attracted unwanted visitors.
“We now have foxes roaming in our gardens in the daylight. That’s never happened before,” he said.
“On June 10 our black bins from the whole street hadn’t been collected. The week before that we had the Jubilee so there was extra rubbish. And in this weather – what are we to do?
“I’m just trying to do my best for the community – especially as it is affecting our elderly neighbours.
“It’s upsetting for them when they complain and get nowhere. I’m trying to get answers
for us all and for our bins to be collected on the proper days.”
Councillor Gareth Williams, Buckinghamshire Council’s cabinet member for climate change and environment, said that changes were made ‘as part of an overall improvement to the 300,000 collections made across the south of the county every week’.
He put the errors down to Veolia making ‘forecast and mitigation’ misjudgements.
He said: “As a result, we know some customers have experienced missed bins, in a few cases for some weeks. This falls well short of the level of service we want and we apologise profusely for this disruption
– we know it’s not good enough.
“We know residents are rightly frustrated by this and want to assure people in the impacted areas that we are doing all we can to make the necessary improvements.”
A recovery and ‘catch-up plan’ has been devised, involving extra crews working more hours to ‘get back on track’ and the time to report missed bins online has increased from 24 to 48 hours.
“We’ve increased the number of people in the call centre to help respond to the extra queries this situation has generated. We are holding daily reviews to check we’re making progress.”