Summary: The Ombudsman found fault on Mr P’s complaint of the Council failing to promptly collect and empty communal bins. The records show many missed collections. It failed to take effective action to prevent them recurring. The agreed action remedies the injustice caused. There was no fault on the complaint about failing to tell residents it was no longer emptying blue bins communal store. While it failed to properly investigate his complaint at stage 1 of its complaints procedure, it did so properly at stage 2. This caused no avoidable injustice.

The complaint

1. Mr P complains the Council failed to promptly:
1. Collect and empty communal bins on the stated collection days;
2. Act on and investigate his reports about missed collections;
3. Tell residents it was not emptying blue bins; and
4. Deal with his complaint properly.
2. As a result, he was frustrated and caused inconvenience by repeatedly having to make reports to the Council.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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)
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)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered all the information provided by Mr P, the notes I made of our telephone conversation, and the Council’s response to my enquiries, a copy of which I sent him. I sent a copy of my draft decision to Mr P and the Council. I considered their responses.

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What I found

6. Early in 2019, Mr P moved to his home. For the first few weeks, he noticed problems with missed collections of his bins by the Council’s contractor. His bins are kept in a communal store. As he had just moved, he was unfamiliar with the frequency and times of collections. The general waste bins are emptied on a weekly cycle each Wednesday. The recycling bins are also emptied on a weekly cycle each Friday.
7. He is unhappy because the collection of both is haphazard with one or both bin collections missed each week. He complains his bins were not rescheduled for collection when he called to report they were missed. He believes the contractor self-reports missed collections which is not accurate. When Mr P contacts the Council’s call centre to report a missed collection, he is given a reference and is told the report is recorded. Staff told him they hear nothing further from the contractor when they pass on the report. Nor do they have a telephone number on which to call them.
8. As nothing happened in response, Mr P made a formal complaint to the Council. The Council told him to contact its Public Space Team but when he did, he got an out-of-office message saying it has 15 working days to respond.

Complaint a): collect on time

9. In response to my enquiries, the Council explained the background to the problem. Mr P’s home is in a block of flats. There was one large bin for them but no recycling. The house-to-house crew (crew 1) collected waste from the communal bin.
10. After October 2018, this changed, and crew 1 only collected from properties with wheelie bins which did not include flats. The new crew (crew 2), who collected from flats, were not told about this block which is why problems began.
11. The Council provided a screen shot showing all reports received about missed collections for his address. This showed:

• 5 reports between October 2018 and April 2019 which covered the communal bins, paper, and recycling; and
• 41 reports from April to September 2019 which covered the same bins.

Analysis

12. The Council accepts part of the problems Mr P experienced was because of a changeover to crew 2 who were not told to collect from Mr P’s address. I consider the failure to make and put in place arrangements for the collection of all waste from Mr P’s address, and communicate this to the relevant crew, is fault.
13. The records also show between October 2018 and April 2019, there were 6 missed collections. The fact there were 41 reports of missed collections between April and September from this address shows the problem continued long after the change made in October 2018 and long after Mr P raised a complaint about it in April 2019.
14. While the Council took steps to ensure these missed collections were indeed collected, I have seen no evidence of it taking effective action to address why these were regularly missed or what it did to resolve the situation. Even when alerted to the problem in April, missed collections continued for a further 5 months. This is fault.
15. I am also satisfied it caused avoidable injustice. The fault caused him distress which included time spent making repeat reports to the Council about missed collections, frustration, and inconvenience.

Complaint b): act on reports

16. The Council explained a person can call or use its website to report a missed collection. This is logged in its system which is integrated with that of the contractor. It is then allocated to a crew for collection. If a person calls the Council, they are asked what type of collection was missed (waste, recycling, or food for example). The person’s name and address are logged on to the system through a ‘script’. This produces a reference number and the person is told to leave the waste out when it will be collected in 2 working days. The Council’s website states reports need making within 2 days of the missed collection. Reports after that time mean it cannot return to collect it until the next scheduled collection day.
17. The Council accepts there were reports of missed collections which were logged and allocated for re-collection. It also accepts Mr P received poor customer service. The customer service team allocated his missed collections to the wrong service. This meant crew 1 turned up and found a block of flats which they were not scheduled to clear.
18. The performance of the contract with the contractor is managed in different ways. The Neighbourhood Client Team monitors it through site visits and daily interaction with the contractor’s environmental managers, residents, and local members, for example. Missed collections are recorded as part of the monthly performance report and there are deductions applied inline with its service performance indicators.
19. The Public Space Team gather business intelligence, performance information, and analyses data held by the Council’s business management systems. The Council accepted there were several instances over the last 3 months when its website was unavailable to those wanting to log a missed collection. This was due to technical reasons with its external provider. It plans to change the website ‘host’ to improve availability in future.

Analysis

20. The Council accepts the customer service team allocated missed collections for re-collection to the wrong service. This is fault.
21. While I am satisfied from the records that missed collections were collected within a day or two of a report, I am not satisfied the Council took steps to resolve the cause of the missed collections. This is fault.

Complaint c): blue bins

22. Mr P complains the blue bins were never emptied. These are for paper and cardboard. He claims the Council’s system had no record of them having them. He discovered this was because they were not supposed to have them and is unhappy with the length of time it took the Council to confirm it despite his reports about failing to empty them. He says this shows the Council does not investigate reports properly.
23. The Council said he had not mentioned problems with these during the complaint procedure. It said the first it knew of the bins was on 16 July 2019 when Mr P called about them. Its Public Space Team responded to him about it. An email to him from this team said they would remove these bins and replace them with one large ‘eurobin’ instead.

Analysis

24. I am unable to make a finding of fault against the Council on this complaint. This is because the evidence does not show it was aware of this problem before July 2019.

Complaint d): complaint procedure

25. The Council received Mr P’s stage 1 complaint request on 18 April 2019 about missed recycling collections over the previous 3 weeks. The Council said it told the contractor about Mr P’s concerns but provided no evidence in support.
26. The Council sent Mr P its stage 1 response on 15 May. It told him it had no evidence to explain why the contractor may have missed these collections or failed to act on the reports. It had sent the contractor his complaint with a request it clear any waste at Mr P’s address.
27. On 15 May, he asked for it to go to stage 2. The Council asked for information from the contractor, evidence of which I have seen. The contractor confirmed it had no reports from Mr P about missed collections in March/April on the dates the Council gave but had one for 13 April. The 3 dates referred to were reported as collected by the crew. It also said if a person calls in with a report, this may not ‘necessarily’ be recorded on its computer system.
28. The Council responded on 7 June, although the copy I have seen is dated 4 June. This noted Mr P called on 16 April to report missed collections for the previous 3 weeks but, it had no records of him reporting these previous ones. The Council apologised for the re-collection taking place 3 working days later, not the 2 required.

Analysis

29. The Council’s complaints procedure consists of:

• Stage 1: complaints are acknowledged and investigated by a member of the service team. It aims to send its response following investigation within 20 working days. If this is not possible, it will tell the complainant the reason and when they might receive a response.
• Stage 2: complaints are investigated by a member of the Complaints Team and a response sent within 25 working days. Again, it will tell the complainant the reason for any delay if this is not possible and when they might receive a response.

30. I am satisfied the Council dealt with his complaint within the timescale set out in its complaints procedure.
31. I am not satisfied the Council investigated his complaint properly at stage 1. This is because it failed to provide evidence of contact with the contractor about his complaint. Nor did it provide evidence of it asking the contractor to comment on the complaint and explain what the problem was if these collections were missed. I consider this is fault.
32. Any injustice this caused Mr P was not significant. This is because the Council properly looked at his complaint at stage 2 and sent him its decision a few weeks later. In addition, the Ombudsman’s investigation has also investigated the issues about which he complained.

Agreed action

33. I considered our guidance on remedies.
34. The Council will, within 4 weeks of the final decision on this complaint, carry out the following:
1. Send Mr P a written apology for the failure to make arrangements for regular bin collections following changes in October 2018, its failure to act effectively to prevent further missed collections, and allocating reports to the wrong crew.
2. Review what happened with Mr P’s reports and consider what steps it can take, with the involvement of the contractor, to ensure it acts effectively on any future reports to ensure Mr P and other members of the public do not have repeated problems with missed collections.
3. Remind relevant staff of the need to allocate reports to the correct crew.
4. Monitor the bin collections for Mr P’s address for the next 4 weeks to see whether the problem continues.
5. Pay Mr P £150 for the distress caused (uncertainty, inconvenience, and frustration) and the time and trouble to which he was put pursuing his reports.

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Final decision

35. The Ombudsman found fault and injustice on complaints a) and b) made by Mr P against the Council, no fault on complaint c), and fault but no injustice on complaint d).

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman