Flintshire’s missed bin collections to be discusses by councillors

The issue of missed bin collections across Flintshire will be looked at by councillors next week.

Earlier this year Flintshire Council’s environment scrutiny committee requested a report on the collection service operated by the authority’s Streetscene and Transportation department.

According to the report authored by the chief officer for Streetscene, the council provides kerbside collections for waste and recycling to more than 72,411 properties in Flintshire.

This service operates across six days (Monday to Saturday), seeing 12,074 properties on average serviced per day for recycling and 6,037 for black bin collections.

When a collection is missed this could be due to one of a number of issues, the report says.

It states: “On rare occasions, we do experience missed collections just like any other local authority, which can be down to various reasons; however, we always do our best to keep this to a minimum and the crews are required to report any collection issues on the rounds so that they can be addressed on the scheduled collection day.

“However, it is recognised that missed collections cause an inconvenience to residents, as well as avoidable work for officers in terms of responding to service requests and complaints.

“Missed collections can be attributed to a range of operational issues such as sickness absence, road closures, traffic congestion or obstructions preventing access to properties, bad weather, customer error and incorrect items being presented, vehicle breakdowns or staff performance.

“Nevertheless, the collection crews take pride in their work, and it is the intention of every crew member to ensure that all collections are completed by the end of each day.”

The report adds that where a black bin, brown bin or food waste has been genuinely missed because of service failure, the council will try to return and collect it within 24 hours of notification.

Figures included in the report show the number of missed collections reports recorded by the council from residents online between April 1 last year and March 31 this year was 9,646.

This works out as an average of 31 missed collections per day across 23,134 planned collections, across 24 operational rounds.

But based on the total count of missed bins reported, these figures demonstrate a successful collection rate of 99.95 per cent.

Fleet condition and availability is also reviewed in the report which will be discussed by the committee when it meets on Tuesday (October 10).

The report notes the council is currently moving into the procurement of a new fleet contract and is looking at additional costs on the basis that it needs to replace some fleet vehicles in the next two years.

By Rory Sheehan – Local Democracy Reporter (more here).