Powys council chiefs admit missed waste and recycling reporting system collapsed during new route roll out 

Cynicism may have set into Powys residents who didn’t see any action or response to reporting missed waste and recycling collections – it has been suggested.

The reported figures could also be the tip of the iceberg as many people would not have bothered going through the council’s reporting process.

At a joint meeting of Powys County Council’s Governance and Audit Committee and Economy, Residents and Communities (ERC) scrutiny committee on Wednesday, July 15, councillors and lay independent members probed the reasons why the change in collection routes had been experienced issues.

The joint committee were looking at the results of an independent review of the new collection routes, by WRAP Cymru.

The review follows the shambolic roll out of new collection routes from March which has seen rubbish and recycling left uncollected for days on end, causing anger amongst residents.

Before the roll out missed collection complaints had been at 0.1 per cent rising to a peak of 0.47 per cent and in March.

Waste and recycling portfolio holder, Councillor Richard Church took over the brief in May replacing Councillor Jackie Charlton following a cabinet reshuffle.

Cllr Church said: “By the time I’d taken on the portfolio, the reliability of the service was already beginning to improve, and it’s continued to improve since.

“By the end of June, 0.24 per cent of collections were reporting as missed.”

By the first week of July thus figure was down to 0.17 per cent.

The report explains that around five per cent of residents which is around 3,500 properties experienced delays and missed collections

Governance and Audit committee vice -chairman and independent lay member John Brautigam said: “I’d like to know why we are using reported misses rather than actual totals.

“Are they not known and if not, are we taking steps to know what they are going to be in future?

“From my own experience, my bin collections were missed five times during that period, I reported them online four times and by telephone twice.

“As far as the online context are concerned three of them are still sitting on my account marked in progress and that’s from March and April.”

He added that when he phoned the longest time he had to wait to speak to somebody was 25 minutes.

Mr Brautigam said: “On each occasion I was promised a call back, but it didn’t happen.

“My point is, if nothing happens, cynicism sets in which makes this data less reliable.”

Cllr Church: “The firmest data we have is the reported missed collections.

“We don’t know what we don’t know if people who have collections missed and don’t report it.

“The problems during that two months is that there were repeat missed collections in certain areas but measuring them precisely is difficult.”

Waste and recycling senior manager Ashley Collins said: “It’s the biggest thing that let us down through the process.”

He explained that when a missed collection report is now received by the council, that would go to someone picking up the data, and then put into the system, and if a crew is nearby, they would be dispatched to pick it.

Any missed collections on a round would be highlighted to a crew and prioritised for the following week’s round.

Mr Collins said: “We do have a system in place, it did fall over particularly in the north (of Powys), we have been very keen to address it.

“We ask and want people to report it so then we have figures we can use.

“Longer term we are looking to introducing in-cab technology so they will need to tick off areas as they do it so that will make them much more accountable.

“At the moment it is all paper based.”

The joint committee will produce a number of recommendations so that the council learns lessons for the future.