‘We inherited bin collection mess - but now our future is looking bright’
Latest stats show hundreds of bins missed per week, Dan Esson reports
As many as 1,500 bins across Kent are being missed each week, new figures reveal. Data obtained through Freedom of Information requests shows residents’ waste has gone uncollected more than 155,000 times over the last two years.
Tonbridge and Malling and the Canterbury district are responsible for about two-fifths of cases since 2021. Meanwhile, Swale and Sevenoaks are the only authorities to have received fewer than 4,000 missed bin reports over the same period.
While the service across Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay ranks among the worst in recent years, city council bosses believe the “future is bright”. Conservative leader Ben Fitter-Harding says his authority’s decision in February 2021 to ditch waste-collection firm Serco and replace it with in-house company Canenco is bearing fruit.
“What Canenco inherited was, quite frankly, a joke, and made me wish we’d been able to sever the contract years before,” the Tory boss said.
“I couldn’t have imagined on Canenco’s first day just how difficult things were going to get before they would get better. “It snowed heavily, and days of cancelled collections meant a brand-new operator was caught playing catch up before it had even found its feet.”
Our findings show Canenco has slashed the number of misses in the district to fewer than 10,000 in the last 12 months.
In the two financial years before Serco was ditched, more than 40,000 bins were reported uncollected by fed-up locals. Almost 30,000 have been missed since April 2021.
But over that period the city council still had the second-highest number of reports in Kent, with Tonbridge and Malling being the only authority to have received more.
Cllr Fitter-Harding argues that many of the problems Canenco has encountered since taking over the service stemmed from the actions of the previous contractor. “Performance under Serco was deteriorating rapidly towards the end of their contract, particularly once they knew they would not be able to tender to continue the service,” he added.
“Their contract was also self-monitoring, and I do not believe their system of record
ing missed bin collections was fit for purpose. But the future is now bright for the city council’s waste collections.”
Lib Dem councillor Mike Sole says he would receive calls from “whole streets” of frustrated residents “every bin collection day” while Serco was in charge of the service.
But now he receives just one complaint a month.
“When things are under council control they are working much better,” he added. “There’s been too much privatisation and effectively you lose control. It leaves you paying someone else’s profits when that money could be retained for council services.”
Despite this, former Labour leader Dave Wilson doubts residents will have “any confidence in the people who were responsible for overseeing Serco’s mess”.
Bosses from Sevenoaks – which recorded the lowest number of missed bins – manage waste collection entirely in-house, rather than through private contractors or a council-run company like Canenco. But in the last year, it has failed to collect people’s waste more than 3,200 times, as teams struggled with new rounds. A Sevenoaks District Council spokesman explained: “The new rounds, the biggest change in more than decade, saw 80% of our residents get a new collection day.
“As with any major change to a service, there were some short-term issues as our crews and residents became used to the new collection days.
“The issues were quickly resolved and we have now returned to a low number of missed collections.” Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, which outsources collections to private company Urbaser, has received the highest number of missed bin complaints in the county since 2021. Its numbers increased over the period from almost 14,954 to 18,592.
And opposition councillor Timothy Bishop believes councils in Tonbridge and Malling and Tunbridge Wells - which also uses Urbaser - are receiving a “poor service”.
The Larkfield representative hopes a new administration after the May elections will approach Sevenoaks authority chiefs to see if they would be willing to take on the contract. “I think the whole problem is it’s very patchy across the borough,” the Lib Dem explained. “We’re leaving the Conservatives to be hung by their own petard on this, because they brought the contract in.
“It was well under-priced we understand that now - and we’re being told it’s going to cost an arm and a leg to get out of in four years’ time.” However, Tonbridge and Malling borough council officials attribute some of the contractor’s recent issues to “struggling to recruit HGV drivers” after the Covid outbreak.
They also stress the recent cold snap in December had a “big impact” on services. “The figures include all reports of missed collections, regardless of whether the collection
crew actually missed it,” a spokesman added.
“Included in them are missed collection reports made on normal collection days, but where collections may have taken place later than normal for some reason.
“Our waste crews make about six million bin collections every year, and our most recent figures show that missed bins account for 0.4% of the total. “We are working hard to bring this figure down and have recently announced plans to upgrade our fleet of waste trucks which will have dedicated vehicles for different types of waste.
“This will help make the service more efficient and reduce the risk of bins being missed.” Information officers from Maidstone Borough Council told our reporter it would take them 2,250 hours collate the authority’s missed bin data. They added it would end up costing £56,250 in staff salary, as they concluded “the public interest lies in not disclosing the information”.
A council spokesman says the request was “manifestly unreasonable on the grounds of costs and diversion of resources”. He added: “The missed bins number is held based on reports by residents and the contractor. “The council holds missed bin information in the round scheduling system recorded on a property-by-property basis. “Our contractor schedules over 18,000 collections every day, therefore we rely quite heavily on the public reporting missed collections.”