Summary: Mrs X complains the Council failed to take prompt action to ensure her bins were collected. The Council accepts there were problems after introducing a new collection service in September 2018. It has apologised to Mrs X, monitored her collections to ensure they are carried out correctly and offered £150 to recognise her time and trouble pursuing the issue. This is an appropriate and proportionate remedy.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains the Council failed to take prompt action to ensure her bins were collected.
2. She says the payment offered is inadequate to reflect the time and trouble and distress she was put to trying to resolve the problems.

Back to top

What I have investigated

3. Mrs X says she has been experiencing missed bin collections for over 10 years. I am considering the Council’s actions since April 2018 as part of this complaint.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

6. As part of the investigation, I have:
• considered the complaint and the documents provided by the complainant;
• made enquiries of the Council and considered the comments and documents the Council provided;
• discussed the issues with the complainant;
• sent my draft decision to both the Council and the complainant and taken account of their comments in reaching my final decision.

Back to top

What I found

7. Mrs X is complaining about missed bin collections. The Council made changes to its collection services in September 2018. It said the purpose of these changes was to increase the amount of recycling, to make the streets cleaner and save money. The new collections include a weekly food collection, fortnightly collections for general household waste and alternating weekly recycling collections for different waste products.
8. The Council has a procedure for reporting missed collections. If a collection is missed, the householder has two days to report it. A report can be made online after 6pm on the scheduled collection day. When the report is received, the Council sends an instruction to its contractor to revisit and collect the bin. The Council says the contractor should revisit within 24 hours.
9. The information provided to me shows Mrs X intermittently reported missed collections. I have evidence Mrs X reported missed collections in June 2018, January, February, May and June 2019.
10. The two missed collections in June 2018 were not completed even though a request was made to the contractors to return and collect the bins. The other reported missed bin collections were all collected within 24 hours of Mrs X reporting them, apart from the missed collection in May 2019. The information provided by the Council says that it was unable to gain access to collect the bin. Mrs X says she always placed her bins in the correct place for collection and there should be no reason for access to be prevented.
11. Mrs X did make a formal complaint about the missed bin collections as she found the situation very frustrating. In its response the Council apologised saying Mrs X had not been offered the level of service that should be expected. It said recent changes to the collection service had resulted in some residents not receiving the usual high standard of service. It said this resulted in more reports and complaints for the department to deal with which in turn had caused delays responding to residents.
12. The Council also comments on Mrs X concerns about the online missed bin reporting system. She queried whether the information on the system was actually correct, eg when it was reported there was no access to make the collection at her property. The Council acknowledged her concerns and said it was working with its contractors on these issues.
13. The Council placed Mrs X’s property on its monitoring list for a six week period. It also ensured a monitoring manager visited the area to ensure the service is being correctly provided and that this would continue until it was satisfied the collections were being carried out correctly. The Council offered Mrs X a payment of £75 to acknowledge the problems and her time and trouble pursuing the issues.
14. Mrs X declined the payment as she did not consider it was enough to compensate her for the problems. The Council considered her comments and revised its offer to £150. Mrs X still felt this was not adequate. When I spoke to Mrs X about her complaint she told me that she felt a payment of £500 was appropriate.
15. The monitoring of Mrs X’s bin collections was carried out and no further problems with missed collections has been reported.

Analysis

16. The information provided shows there has been fault in this case. The Council accepts it did not always collect Mrs X’s bins on the correct day. This required her to report the missed the collections using the Council’s online reporting system. In most instances, this did result in the contractors returning to collect the bin within 24 hours. However, there were some occasions when this did not happen.
17. The Council has acknowledged its fault and apologised to Mrs X. The information provided shows the service has improved and I have no evidence of any further missed collections since I began investigating this complaint. The Council has also offered a payment which Mrs X has declined saying it is not enough to compensate for the difficulties she experienced.
18. I am aware Mrs X says she has had problems with the bin collections for 10 years. However, I have explained that this complaint is not considering that whole period of time but only the collections from April 2018 onwards. The information for this period shows while Mrs X has reported a number of missed collections, this has been an intermittent problem. For the majority of time the collections have been completed without any difficulties.
19. In August 2019, the Ombudsman issued a public report about problems with bin collections in Birmingham. The report was written about 17 separate complainants who had different problems. In that report, the Ombudsman recommended payments of between £100 and £300.
20. I am satisfied the £150 offered in this case is an appropriate and proportionate amount. It is in line with amounts recommended by the Ombudsman in similar cases. I do not consider any further remedy should be recommended in this case.

Back to top

Final decision

21. I will now complete my investigation as a suitable remedy for the injustice experienced by Mrs X has already been offered by the Council.

Back to top

Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

22. While Mrs X says she experienced problems with missed collections for over 10 years, the information she has provided relates to issues from 2018 onwards. Missed collections further in the past are now too old to be successfully investigated.
23.  

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman