Labour’s opposition spokesperson for environmental issues, Councillor Gary Wilkinson, has written to environment committee co-chairs, Councillors Heley and Davies, calling for a more robust monitoring system for missed bin collections, and offering to assist the Green Council in overcoming these persistent problems.

Cllr Wilkinson’s letter to the co-chairs of the Environment, Transport & Sustainability Committee, comes off the back of Labour’s successful motion to Full Council (3 February) that called on all parties to work together to find solutions to ongoing problems with the delivery of basic council services.

At the same Council meeting, Cllr Wilkinson asked the Green administration if it could provide details of missed collections of refuse and recycling across the City on a ward-by-ward basis and the reasons for missed collection. He was told it was possible to do this but that the Council lacks the officer capacity and it is not possible to supply the specific reasons for individual missed collections.

Noting the systemic issue of missed collections, and the lack of collation and analysis of relevant data, Labour have called for a robust monitoring system to be put in place.

Labour’s opposition spokesperson for environmental issues, Cllr Gary Wilkinson, says:

“I myself have reported missed collections on the Council website and the form requires your address. It should therefore be possible to use that data to get a ward-by-ward breakdown to analyse where the issues are and where resources need to be focussed.

“I appreciate the limits on staff capacity so I have offered my assistance in collating this data.

“It is crucial that we are able to identify patterns or hotspots in missed collections across the City in order to provide a better service to our residents.

“Actively monitoring bin collections should lie with the Council and not just the goodwill of our residents who occasionally report a missed collection.”

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