Bin collection delays continue

Burnham: Residents head to tip to dispose of rubbish

Residents in parts of Burnham have resorted to disposing of their own household waste and recycling due to a series of missed council collections.

In June, the Express reported on weeks of missed collections in parts of the village following the start of a new waste and recycling collection programme.

Buckinghamshire Council issued an apology and said it was ‘doing all we can to make the necessary improvements’ – but two months on problems are persisting in some areas.

Dr Arshad Jarral, of Stafford Close, has been driving his loaded bins, and those of his neighbours, to the Burnham Refuse Centre in Crow Piece Lane.

“I’m doing it because not having our bins collected as promised is causing us great concern,” he said.

“Every week my wife is doing extra cleaning because of the stench and the maggots. And my elderly neighbours are getting so distressed, coming out every hour to check if the bins have gone.”

Dr Jarral says he has had to take over because numerous complaints sent to Buckinghamshire Council have gone unanswered.

“It feels like there’s not even a council to talk to when I try to complain,” he said.

Dr Jarral feels that the problem he and fellow residents face is two-fold.

“We have missed bin collections which is one thing. But then when you try to complain about it you get nowhere,” he said.

“Every time I ring the council they close the case or they pass it on to the contractor and they don’t make contact.”

Problems started in May when a change to the weekly collection schedule moved collections from Mondays to Fridays.

That first week (from May 16) saw many Burnham bins go uncollected and since then teething problems with the new Friday pick-up have been experienced by Veolia, the contractor appointed by Buckinghamshire Council to empty the 300,000 bins across the county each week.

The errors were explained in a statement by Gareth Williams, Buckinghamshire Council’s cabinet member for climate change and Environment, who said on

June 21 that the contractor made ‘forecast and mitigation’ errors.

Leader of council, Martin Tett, also addressed the situation with an apology statement in his June newsletter.

Burnham residents, including Dr Jarral, who have been dealing with uncollected bins for some time, believe that the council and its contractors have had enough time to get things right.

Jilly Jordan, deputy cabinet member for climate change and environment, said in a statement last week: “We apologise for the continued disruption to our collection service.

“It is taking our contractor Veolia a lot longer than we would have hoped to get to an expected good level of service.

“However, the service is slowly improving and there are less than a quarter of the number of missed bins in recent weeks than in June.

“To continue to improve the service, two additional waste vehicles and crews are being brought onto the service permanently and Veolia are also retaining additional support crews and supervisors until a normal service is fully restored.”