Late letters about bin changes are a waste

Letters sent to residents by Stirling Council about the rollout of new bins turned out to be a waste of time after they arrived too late.

Locals in Dunblane contacted their local councillor after receiving the letter telling them to present their brown bins for swapping - earlier the same day.

Tory councillor for Dunblane and Bridge of Allan Alastair Majury said locals had received the letters late morning and early afternoon on Monday (November 16) informing them of the replacement of their grey and brown bins.

However the correspondence, dated November 10, stated their old brown bins were to be collected in the morning of the same day and for many householders the collection process had already taken place.

The letter also included notes about what residents should do if they are not at home for the collection.

Councillor Majury told the Observer this week he had received a number of complaints from residents both bemused and angry at the council’s inability to get the crucial communication through letterboxes in plenty of time.

He added: “Many people do not present their brown bin every time so needed reasonable notice about when their old bin should have been left out to be collected. This has created more work and more expense.

“There needs to be far better communication but given the failure to talk to residents before the hugely unpopular cuts to collections and garden waste charges were forced on them it is unfortunately not surprising.”

A Stirling Council spokesperson said: “Unfortunately there was a slight delay in the delivery of letters to residents in Dunblane on Monday but thankfully this appears to have had minimal impact, as the council collection teams saw fantastic presentation levels of brown bins from across the community.

“That was repeated yesterday (Tuesday) when the roll out started in Raploch, showing our distribution of letters to households, supplemented by extensive public website and social media messaging and engagement, local press coverage, radio announcements and briefings for all elected members, has ensured the message is out there.

“The council has made this a purposefully simple situation where all residents really need to do is present their bin as normal, and we’ve built in extra capacity on daily collection routes to ensure any missed bins can be recovered within 48 hours. We thank residents for engaging with the bin swap so far.

“Householders in future phases will receive letters prior to their bin swap and we encourage everyone to continue to check our website at www. stirling.gov.uk/binswap for further updates.”

Earlier this year the council agreed to spend £2.017 million replacing up to 90,000 grey general waste and brown garden waste bins with new “comb bins”. The blue and green comb bins were introduced in 2016.

The removal and replacement of the bins is the first phase of the council’s controversial waste transformation programme - which will see grey and blue bins collected every four weeks instead of fortnightly. The council argue the plans will reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill and increase recycling rates but residents sparked a 6000 signature online petition calling for them to be scrapped.

The award of the contract to supply the household bins also includes the rollout of the bins and collection and disposal of the old bins.