Blog: GPS logging, photographs, data collection . . . no, we are not talking about Nato surveillance missions over Libya. Amazingly, we are talking about bin collections.

In a weird example of a way of making something simple as complicated as possible, Telford & Wrekin Council’s bin collectors Telford and Wrekin Services have been taking photos of private driveways and crossroads in rural areas.

Residents have been mystified and alarmed.

The council says it is an exercise by TWS to map bin collections “to ensure a quality service is delivered to the community.”

But, come on, how difficult can it be to collect the bins?

Yet, by policy, the service is inferior today to that enjoyed by previous generations, when every week cheery binmen would go to the back of your house, haul the metal dustbin – they had no wheels to make things easier – on their backs to the refuse collection vehicle, tip in the rubbish, and then return the dustbin to where they had got it from.

Today general refuse collection is fortnightly and has a large DIY element. Unless you can get two weeks’ rubbish in the bin, they will refuse to collect any extra. Householders are expected to take the full, heavy bins to the edge of their property. Again, if you fail to comply, your bin will simply be left uncollected.

Lid gaping open? The bin will not be emptied.

Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard says this photographing exercise smacks of Big Brother and intrusion. To some residents that is indeed how it seems.

And if the council really does want to improve the bin service, the answer does not lie in any complicated research, but in getting back to basics.

Like, for example, reinstating a weekly collection.