First Minister’s recycling missed as row continues

EVEN Carwyn Jones isn’t immune to the current waste “crisis” in Bridgend.

The First Minister tweeted that his street’s recycling wasn’t collected as scheduled on Thursday despite council contractors taking special steps to clear a county-wide backlog.

It came after the Bridgend AM was criticised by Plaid Cymru’s Bethan Jenkins on social media.

She accused him of telling the Senedd there was “no issue” with the council’s new waste contract and “he was doing it just fine” on Tuesday.

Mr Jones vehemently denied glossing over the problems and is now seeking a meeting with the Labour leader of Bridgend council Huw David.

He tweeted on Thursday evening: “And sure enough, the recycling wasn’t collected on the street where I live today. At least there’s no favouritism...”

He then clarified it with another tweet: “For those confused about the tweet about recycling it’s about an ongoing issue in Bridgend, not an isolated whim.”

Since it started on June 5, Bridgend council’s new waste service – delivered by contractors Kier – has been dogged by large numbers of missed rubbish and recycling collections.

In some cases waste, including food and nappies, has been left on the kerbside for a fortnight.

Many residents have also complained they have still not received the required boxes and bags and cannot get through to Kier’s Devon call centre to complain.

The scheme limits homes with up to five residents to a maximum of two bags of non-recyclable waste for their fortnightly collection in a bid to drive up recycling rates.

But councillors across the political divide have labelled the high level of missed collections a “crisis” and called for the Labour-led authority to take action.

Both council leader Huw David and Kier’s managing director Julian Tranter have apologised.

Longstanding county councillor and former leader of Bridgend Cheryl Green said the scheme has suffered “systemic failure”.

The council said it continues to “relentlessly pursue Kier to improve their performance”.

A series of urgent actions have been agreed.

These include a controversial temporary measure where residents’ pre-sorted recycling is thrown together into the back of a refuse lorry to speed up the process.

Kier said it would be re-sorted later on and would not go to landfill.

In a statement a Bridgend council spokesman said: “Kier has deployed extra vehicles and taken on additional staff, including five new drivers, to ensure that all available resources and vehicles can be deployed.

“They will also be working throughout the weekend, and have given us assurances that the overall service will be back on a more even keel very soon.

“Early indications from the scheme are highly encouraging with Kier reporting an increase in daily recycling tonnages of nearly 50%, but further urgent improvements in the implementation are clearly required and we will continue to pursue Kier on this.”