Bin uplift delay dismay
Dunblane residents unable to access temporary bin uplift facilities during the snowy weather earlier this month have hit out at Stirling Council.
The temporary uplift facilities were made available at the town’s Tesco after regular fortnightly collections were not possible in the wake of the ‘Beast from the East’.
But elderly and infirm residents in the Highfields area have pointed out that they were unable to get to the temporary facilities – leaving them with their grey and blue bins until this Monday, March 19.
Grey bins (for polystyrene, plastic bags and nappies) and blue bins (for tins, cartons and aerosols) are normally scheduled for uplift every fortnight.
A Highfields pensioner told the Observer:“There are people here in their eighties, they can’t be expected to go out in the snow. It’s out of order.
“There are also young mums who use the grey bins to put nappies in. These have now been sitting in bins for a month. It’s ridiculous that nappies have been left there for so long.
“The temporary arrangements at Tesco was also put out on the council’s website and social media, which I am not interested in. The council didn’t consider that a lot of the people affected do not use that method of communication. We learned about the temporary uplift through word of mouth.”
Dunblane Conservative councillor Alastair Majury had pointed out to Stirling Council that the use of social media to get their message across on the matter was not suitable in the circumstances.
He also expressed disappointment that the local authority hadn’t acted on residents’concerns about the build-up of waste.
Councillor Majury said: “While I was pleased that the council quickly acted on my concerns about the limited reach of the initial communication approach, I am however disappointed that the council hasn’t listened to the concerns of residents and will allow waste to build up for four weeks.”
The local authority pointed out this week that residents have since been advised three black bags can be uplifted in addition to the outstanding bin collections.
A Stirling Council spokesperson commented: “When the extreme winter weather hit, causing disruption across the entire Stirling Council area, we used all communications channels available to immediately inform residents of the impact on waste collections. In addition to highlighting on social media and our website, we also advised our internal care at home staff who shared this with the residents they support and updated local community councils.
“Additional waste collections were put in place to collect bins impacted by the weather and we are working towards resuming normal service this week. We would like to apologise to residents for any disruption caused by the weather conditions.”