Grumbles over bins top Shropshire Council complaints list
Tuesday 2nd August 2011, 7:00PM BST.
Failure to collect wheelie bins was the most complained-about key issue to Shropshire Council in the past financial year, new figures show.
A report to an authority watchdog says there were a total of 146 complaints relating to collection of wheelie bins, recycling and other waste collections. The collection of bins comes within the public protection department at the council which was the most complained about department.
It accounted for 500 of the 1,378 complaints received by the council.
The annual report for customer representations from April 2010 to March 2011 shows that overall stage one and two complaints have reduced this year compared to last year.
But it also warns that the number of complaints referred to the Local Government Ombudsman has increased “significantly” .
The report says that of the 1,378 complaints received, 604 were upheld/partially upheld.
The top three key issues were failure or refusal to deliver a service which accounted for 185 complaints; quality issues attracted 35 complaints and other staff conduct issues made up 27 complaints.
The report says: “The 185 issues caused by ‘failure or refusal to deliver a service’ are, in the main related to waste services with 146 relating to collection of wheelie bins, recycling and other waste collections. This needs to be seen in the context of the number of collections carried out each year; 10 million doorstep collections are carried out by Veolia over a 12 month period.”
By Russell Roberts
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No complaints about our bin men in Heath Farm Shrewsbury. they do a marvelous job.
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I must say i am really pleased with our bin collection service.
The binmen collect what i put out every week,
yes every week our binmen collect so i guess
we are lucky.
Although i do not put out more than my fair share,unlike some i often a bin and half a dozen bags next to it.
So why is refuse collection the only service
that people can over use and not pay accordingly?
If everyone abused the service we would need more binmen more bin wagons and additional land fill tax.
That will mean higher council tax,well for those of us who have to pay it.
No thanks
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185 issues in the context of 10 million collections. That is a complaint rate of 0.00185% which probably means you are statistically more likely to win the lottery than to have a problem with your bins being collected, perhaps if the council employed less complaints gurus and a few more statistitians they could save themselves some paper work ?
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Well said you are probably statistically more likely to be hit by lightening than have your bin missed by the council!
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I am not suprised with the winter weather waste went uncollected for about a month where I live, I Would wager that most of the people down our lane complained at least once over that period, so that alone probably accounts for about 10 of them
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not suprised fortnightly bins stink.collect them weekly and you wont get as many complaints. this is supposed to be conservative party policy. do what the votes want and you get less complaints. simples
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Leon last time there was a story about bin collection most people were more than happy with the way things are. You are doing something wrong if you over load your bins in such a short time. We are a family of five, three adults, two young children and we never fill up our bin. If the lid is closed they don’t smell. Try using some common sense.
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I must say I am suprised by this. Personally my bin man does a fantastic job, we have had the same bin man for all the 11 years we have lived in Shropshire and he is charming.
All those men, they do a horrible job in all seasons and I would like to see some of these complainers get out there with them and lift bins all day.
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Well if they do propose to build a polluting incinerator in our historic county town then what do they expect! There was over 600 objections to their plans to burn rubbish in Shrewsbury so they should have added them in as complaints too showing the true level of public disatisfaction
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I think an more detailed analysis of the data would be helpful before people jump to conclusions look with cool heads
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my oh my how people like to moan for god sakes get a life its only a bin if you have a problem with the collection take it to the tip yourslef
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In the habit of giving money away are we?, if people have a complaint, complain that is how you retain good service by not permitting it to fall below what is to be expected.
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d-mon,
We are not payed to take our rubbish to the tip! we pay people to do it for us – its called council tax!
Our bin men are pleasant enough men, but I have to say they do not put the bins and boxes back where they find them, all over the place and block peoples drives. Its not nice having somone elses bin have way across your front garden. Bit of common sense please.
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The old ‘i pay my council tax’ line is back. Therefore I want the moon on a stick please.
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No just value for money, and a decent service, clearly your standards and expectations are far below mine.
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I thinks already a decent service. In fact I’d like to see it go further and for people to recycle more.
Clearly you are upset at expecting a weekly black bin collection so you can not bother recycling at all, which I feel is a very sad attitude to have.
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Maybe the problems are in other parts of Shropshire, because in Telford the service is fantastic!
Every week binmen come round and collect our rubbish. One week they take general waste, and the next week they collect recycling.
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Have to agree with that – never had a problem in Telford.
That being said – given the tiny number of complaints when compared to the level of service provided, it doesn’t look as though Shropshire has a problem at all either.
The partnership between Shropshire council and its provate sector operative seems to be working reasonably well – I bet some of our major utility companies, who have raised prices by over 25% in many cases in the past year, can only look on with envy at such high levels of customer service.
In the light of such low numbers of complaints it’s surprising that so many in these pages are willing to criticise those who provide public services, and baffling that Shropshire Council seek to alienate their staff by sacking them all and trying to re-employ them on inferior terms and conditions.
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Lets not confuse discussions here. The levels of service are acceptable, I have not had a problem.
However, I cannot argue with the cuts being made by the council! The council as a whole is overstaffed and overpaid, occasionally you have the pleasure of meeting one of the honest ones that admit the ridiculous state of the public sector!
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Evidence for that please?
Or was it just prejudice?
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Pssssst! In Telford we don’t come under Shropshire Council :)
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THEY DO COLLECT THE BINS WEEKLY!!!
one week its household waste the next week its recycling.
Why move back to a weekly household collection? how many of the people complaining on here would recycle if that was the case? Very little i’d imagine.
We are light years ahead of main land Europe when it comes to recycling and we should be recycling more not less. If we put as much effort into recycling as we do moaning about it then there would be no problem.
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Sorry i meant light years behind the rest of europe
my bad!!
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Agree in Telford collections are very good because we get all plastic collected, I beleive the article refers to Shropshire though were from what I have heard they aint so hot anymore
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I think its a shame that since they contracted out the collections in shrewsbury they have stopped recycling old clothing, i used to have a good bin bag full every few months which we put out for the recycling, now they just leave it behind and it goes in the rubbish bin instead
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The clothes collected get wet and thus make them unuseable. I am aware that instead of the doorstep 10 new bring sites were installed in order that its not far to take them. All big stores have bring sites.
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CM clearly you know very little about recycling if you think ten bring sites will replace a kerbside collection in terms of tonnnage diversion – if you rely on bring banks you would only ever recycle about 12% of waste at best
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totally agree we used to get a really good service from Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council but its been nothing but cuts cuts cuts since the private sector took over the service, now they dont recycle clothing or batteries and they are cutting other services in other areas too, the service is frankly rubbish
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Is that all, thought there would be more Daily Mail readers in Shropshire!
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if my maths is correct that means they miss about 1 out of every 50,000 collections, relative to say the Royal Mail, I suspect thats really quite good
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Whats Royal Mail got to do with bins??
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Bring back weekly collections , we pay our taxes , ok it is weekly as in every other we have to put out a recycle bin or 4 soon it will be a bin for stinking food waste . Personally i think it is all a rather good con on the good old gp get them to do the work they pay us to do, suckers!! its a great idea .
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As small children we are taught to put the correct things into the correct boxes. Why is this suddenly so hard for a grown adult to do? It literally takes seconds to do.
We can’t keep burying this stuff under the ground and forgetting about it.
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That is not my point , we pay taxes we do not get a discount on sorting and recycling, in fact it goes up and they do less. As for the food waste, in Yorkshire they have now started to provide bins for food waste, which includes i believe bones so unless salopian is a dog or a vegi?what would he do with them?.We now have in some areas where it is totally impracticable up to 5 bins being stored by peoples homes making some areas look like grubby little shanty towns, plus the problem of many to idle to take the bins in for days.
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Well put it all into your black bin if your too busy to spare a few seconds to put them into the correct container.
You can send back the other bins and stop moaning about it if you feel that strongly.
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Funny you said that pete, however if i do that which would be my choice, i would then receive a lesser service than you as i would only receive a fortnightly collection and yet pay for a full service .
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Well as you admit that would be your choice. The facilities are there for recycling so it would be your choice not to use them.
Its your waste and it won’t magically disappear so do with it what you want. You talk about getting value for your taxes put you seem unwilling to take full advantage of the services available. But if you don’t want value for money and throw money away then thats your choice. No point kicking up a fuss about it.
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Well i have solved the problem pete i have bought a rather good second hand compressor off ebay which squashes the rubbish i can then fit twice as much in to the blue bin hey presto a fortnightly collection is now fine.
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I don’t know if i am abnormal but i don’t have alot of stinking food waste in my bin.
There are various reasons for this,
1, it attracts flies,can’t stand flies
2, food is expensive i can’t afford to waste it
3, It messes up the bin, i do swill my bin out occasionally,but i don’t like to do it
to often as i can find better ways to spend my time.
A good tip is if you have any food waste put it in a bag and freeze it until bin morning.
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Thought it was yur waste not the councils. More collections more cost.
If by recycling the expence is reduced from sending to landfill that hasto be good. Why leave a legacy for my kids.
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no less collections same cost as before, what if you took your car to a garage and he said take the part out yourself and i will put the new on in and charge you full whack.You wouldnt do it ofr any other business why do it for the council.
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I agree when the bins were done weekly it was loads better
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Our binmen took the top of the wall out surrounding our communal bin area with the truck 4 weeks ago and didn’t own They do always collect though!
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Pete,
Yes the line is back, I pay my council tax, its a service in which you expect the best of the providers ability, the same as any other service and product we buy.
Is that not normal?? If someone provides you with a service which you are not happy with and they said to you stop moaning mate yes you have payed me but you should not expect the best… what would you say ey?
The council is a business and we pay them to do the best they can!
End of.
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Well said, Glyn. What people like Pete need to realise, is that if the council was a privately run business, they would soon go out of business if they failed to provide the level of service that people expect, from a very expensive but inefficiently run organisation, that treats it’s customers with a “take it or lump it” attitude.
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‘if the council was a privately run business, they would soon go out of business if they failed to provide the level of service that people expect..’
Really? Or would they simply do what utility companies do and a) provide lousy service whilst b) increasing their prices year after year far in excess of inflation.
Councils have to pay gas, electricity and phone bills too – why do you expect them to be able to constantly absorb inflation-busting cost increases but provide the same level of service?
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At least with utilities you can shop around still and report them to the appropriate ombudsman which brings results, unlike the ex ceo run council ombudsman.
Granted, utilities and some of the larger companies are a bit of a law unto them selves but smaller councils should try not to act above their station like these bigger national companies and appreciate what they are, smallish companies run by not overly qualified personell, for the benefit of the community.
Were they medium sized privately run businesses, based entirely within the county, they would soon fold when competing in the market place of the “real world”.
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if the comment 16 is corrrect in their assertion that the odds of having your bin missed in shropshire are 50,000 to 1, then I thought it might be interesting to know that you are more likely to:
- Be hit by a falling firework: (19,556 to 1)
- Odds of dying in a car crash (5,000 to 1)
- Odds of getting cancer (5 to 1)
so worry about that!
If you really want to fill column inches with worries about missed bins might I suggest you study the fact that the chance that Earth will experience a catastrophic collision with an asteroid in the next 100 years is just one 1 in 5,000 i.e. TEN TIMES more probably than your bin being missed!!!!!
In fact you are almost 3 times more likely to be murdered in the UK (18,000 to 1)
In effect you could pretty much bet your house that if you lived in Shropshire for 100 years your bin would NEVER EVER be missed!!!
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“Councils have to pay gas, electricity and phone bills too – why do you expect them to be able to constantly absorb inflation-busting cost increases but provide the same level of service?”
Peter, I think you will find that this is what thousands of small and medium sized businesses are managing to do already.
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‘Well said, Glyn. What people like Pete need to realise, is that if the council was a privately run business, they would soon go out of business if they failed to provide the level of service that people expect, from a very expensive but inefficiently run organisation, that treats it’s customers with a “take it or lump it” attitude.’
If the council were a privately run business then there would be a lot of services that you simply wouldn’t have, such as police, NHS hospitals and a fire brigade for a start.
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it is not a suprise that now the service is being run for profit, the quality is reduced compared to when it was run by public servants
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clearly privatising services results in less quality and more complaints, TAKE NOTE SHROPSHIRE COUNCILLORS!
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well what do they expect getting a french firm into do the bins, they cant read the roadsigns or anything, this is the work of the EU making us recycle and medding with our weekly bin day
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I suspect most complaints are about recycling, because shropshire council does not put enough effort into the recycling collections in particular with plastics where they only recycle plastic bottles even though powys, telford, cheshire west, cheshire east, wyre forest and worcester all collect and recycling yoghurt pots, tubs trays etc, but apparently in shropshire there isnt the technology to do it, these idiots live in a bubble and clearly cant open their eyes or pick up the phone to their neighbours and find out how to run a good recycling service
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Pete,
The problem is this… we pay a rate for a service, so if we have a problem with that service, and many people do believe me, then we do not have the option of not paying them that rate, we cant even say ‘ well I’m not that pleased would you accept half?’ No! we have to pay no matter.
Therefore the council will always perform just above the level that they need to , maybe even below, and whilst people like you say ‘Stop maoning, they’re doing their best… blaa blaa blaa then it will never improve.
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“If the council were a privately run business then there would be a lot of services that you simply wouldn’t have, such as police, NHS hospitals and a fire brigade for a start.”
Well I didn’t know that the councils ran the NHS, ploice and fire service, that’s news to me but one thing is for sure, if the council was privately run and had to compete for business alongside similar businesses offering the same services,it would fold. The people running the council couldn’t run a profit making, competetive business.
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Erm I strongly suggest that you have a look into what your council tax actually pays for if you don’t think it covers police, fire brigade and hospitals.
But there are lots of other services instead of bin collections. Who repairs the roads? who provides essential care for the elderly? who provides a free library service? Who cleans the streets before you get out of bed? Who provides free education in schools? The list could go on.
Now if your telling me that all of these services should be run for a profit? These are all public services that we take for granted and all you can do is moan about a few bins and how you pay your taxes. We all pay are taxes and i suggest you look at what you actually pay for before you make knee jerk comments.
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Firstly, Pete, I appreciate that funding for the police, hospitals and fire service is collected at the same time as council tax, I remember when our water rates were too but it doesn’t say that the council actually “run” these services…heaven forbid us if they ever did.
Secondly, I’m not saying councils should be run for a profit and don’t know where you get that idea from. I’m just stating that the people “runnuing” the council couldn’t run a proper, profit making business that had to compete alongside other “proper” businesses, especially with their, “we don’t care what you think, we’ve got your money, now stay quiet”, attitude that you seem to think is justifiable.
Councils are spending our money so they should be accountable to us, just because they have no “competition” that can take their business away from them doesn’t give them the right to disrespect the “people who pay their wages”, so why do you think that they should?
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But the people at the council don’t need to have the skills to run a private company and vice versa. It is a completely differnt set of skills required, so whats you point? Its like saying that someone that can run a profitable pub will be able to run a profitable supermarket and its simply not true.
The reason there is no competition for a lot of the services from the private sector is down to the simple fact that a lot of the services are non profitable so why would anyone provide any competition?
Your right the council should be accountable to us. But jumping up and down screaming ‘we pay their wages’ is hardly contructive is it? We all pay our council tax, none of us like it, but we have to by law. It seems that some people are unable to get over that fact.
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Pete, you are totally missing the obvious. I will try and put it very simply for you.
The people at the council ARE running a business. It is a business that is paid for by the PUBLIC, therefore you are accountable to the public and should make sure everyone is happy that they are getting value for money. To take the attitude that you are taking is not good enough.
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I totally agree with the attitude of SOME (not all) council workers that we are the monopoly provider of services here and the computer says NO, they are power mad on a trip of enforcing anal rules which dont make sense you cant challenge anything with a culture of rules and red tape and NO, NO, NO they just dont have any flexibility
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Personally, Pete, I don’t have a problem with my bin men and never have, they do a marvellous job but what I do have a BIG problem is with office bound “people”, much like yourself I would guess, who probably don’t do any front line work and begrudge us the taxpayers questioning “your” decisions and work ability.
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they dont even supply any recycling where i live you have to take it to asda about half a mile away! hence no one bothers and the bins are always overflowing
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it is just like the NHS at that council, too many beaurocrats in the back office, i say get rid of some of the middle management and employ a few more bin men instead and you might find the job gets done better!
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Very true, Angela.
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Hear Hear Angela, the public sector is bloated with overpaid managers, SACK THEM ALL NOW!
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I work for the council and while there are some good facilities for recycling I would like more as well!
In my opinion anything thats stops rubish going into landfill would be perfect! The only issue with it all is the costs of it all which when everyone’s making cuts is a shame services for taxpayers (including me, I’m one as well!) have to suffer because of central government’s budgets!
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If you work for the Council then you should be sorting out more types of plastic recycling and doing something about it not just complaining about it! Remember they are only cutting your budgets because it is neccessary because of too much council spending in the past under Brown and those wicked Labour socialists, so instead of moaning and being in a union complaining for hire wages all the time, you should have been more prudent when times were good and not just wasted all our money and not just taxed us to the hilt and then we wouldnt be in the mess! Remember too I PAY YOUR WAGES!
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lol – i guess the service is “rubbish” :)
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if they collected more types of plastic they would get less complaints, if telford can do it why cant shropshire?
I am also very dissapointed with the cuts to the food waste collection service
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It’s not a bad service but for me they could improve in a number of areas:
1) plastics – why not collect all plastics and worry about which number is which later?
2) less bins – why not put it mixed in one bin like other councils do and sort it for us? We are doing the councils job for them!
3) paper – always gets soggy and heavy in the rain, if we cant have a bin please atleast provide lids for the boxes
4) attitude – of staff in the office is terrible, phone manner is damn right rude
5) vehicles – need to think like a rural council and use smaller trucks so they can get down lanes and provide service to ALL ratepayers
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the other thing that annoys me about the bin men (apart from the fact that they are overpaid underworked public sector layabouts) who earn more than me but work less hours, is that they cant be bothered to leave the bin where you put it but often throw it back in any old place and block the drive causing a danger to traffic and pedestrians in the process
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Some people complain too much, i think if you are prepared to work outdoors all year round in all weathers on your feet all day dealing with other peoples stinking trash and maggots and all sorts then you have a right to complain about it, until you can do that they you have NO RIGHT to complain
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i dont mind doing my bit and recycling but i really think they dont make it easy for you do they, there is so much which is not accepted you need a degree in recycling to figure out half of it!
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the problem with the council is that they have a one size fits all approach to everything in a massive diverse county you need to have flexible local policies in local areas, to be honest really they should have never gone unitary its been a mess, share the back office function by all means but things like bins should be organised locally be local people who know the patch
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Solution – Build a incinerator in Shrewsbury therefore it will be quicker to take waste from houses to incinerator in shrewsbury reducing collection times and possibly resulting in a bin collection each week.
Simples.
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this is meaningless without contrast to other areas, is it really that shropshire has terrible bin services or are there just more people in shropshire than say in telford, these stats need to be benchmarked and put into some context or they are meaningless, for all we know only getting 185 complaints in a year may be a good level of performance or it may be bad, more data is needed hey?
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I am very disapointed with the fact that shropshrie council is going down the PFI route with its waste contract, by all accounts PFI is a proven failure where taxpayers pay above the going rate to hire purchase equipment and buildings from profit making companies, its a ludicrous concept which is costing shropshire taxpayers hundreds of millions and means they have lost all democratic control of their waste services
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shropshire council from 5 star to 1 star in a few years, they are now just simply rubbish, their strapline should be “striving for utter rubbish”
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No complaints here, we get an excellent service from the bin men
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if bin collections were a utility like gas and electric where you could switch suppliers to get a cheaper or better service, how many people would be with the council / veolia do you think? I for one would rather
a) have my money back and take my own stuff to the tip
or
b) have my money back and get a private provider in to do rubbish every week to avoid smells and storage and with recycling all in one bin to make it easier
either way i agree with the sentiments expressed that if the council was a business they would go bust because they dont give the customer what they want and they arent good value for money
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