Summary: All six complainants complained about the Council’s waste and refuse collection service over the past twelve months. The Council was at fault for missed collections. The Council has agreed to review how it records and investigates missed collections. It has also agreed to remedy the complainants for their avoidable time and trouble in bringing their complaints to the Ombudsman.

The complaint

1. All six complainants complained about the Council’s waste and refuse collection service over the past twelve months. All the complainants said they had been put to avoidable time and trouble having to report missed collections to the Council and had the inconvenience of their bins not being collected.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
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)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered each of the individual complaints and made enquiries of the Council.
5. The complainants and the Council both had the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

Household waste and recycling collections

6. Councils have a duty under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to collect household waste and recycling from properties in its area. The collections do not have to be weekly and councils can decide the type of bins or boxes people must use.
7. Thanet collects general waste weekly and recycling on a fortnightly basis. In some areas it offers a food collection service that it collects weekly.

Reporting missed collections

8. The Council’s website says it will only collect a missed bin if it is reported by the end of the next working day after it was due to be collected. Otherwise, it collects the bin on the next scheduled collection.
9. Residents can report missed collections either on-line or by telephone. The missed collections are recorded on a customer contact record that links to the Council’s waste collection records. The record shows when and how the resident reported the missed collection and when the Council completed the rescheduled collection.
10. If a resident reports more than one missed collection, the Council considers it as a complaint. The Council operates a two-stage complaints procedure. If a person remains unhappy after its stage two response it directs them to the Ombudsman.

Garden waste service

11. The Council provides an optional green waste collection service. Residents must purchase a Council specific bin at a one-off cost of £35.00. They must then pay an annual subscription for their green waste collection of £51.00. That works out as a cost of just under £2.00 per collection.
12. The Council collects this waste fortnightly all year except for a month between mid- December until mid-January. If a resident reports a missed collection, the Council says it will try to arrange to collect it the Wednesday following the miss. The terms and conditions for the garden waste subscription service state that refunds will not be given for missed collections.

Background

13. Since January 2019 the Ombudsman has received 15 complaints about the Council’s refuse and recycling service. We could not consider five of these as the complaint had not completed the Council’s complaints process. Of the rest, we found fault in four. We have investigated the remaining six complaints and they form this decision statement.

Missed general, food and recycling waste collections

Miss X’s complaint

14. Miss X lives in a block of flats (block one). Her waste is collected from a communal bin that is located on a private road at the back of the flats. There are other flats whose waste is also collected from the rear of the property (block two).
15. The Council’s customer contact record show from January 2019 until November 2019, Miss X reported six missed collections. In response to enquiries, the Council also provided copies of the online service requests made by Miss X and internal emails from its customer service centre to the waste collection service. These records show an additional four missed collections that were not on the customer contact record.
16. Miss X also telephoned the Council three times in June and July 2019 because a neighboring property kept moving the bin from its designated space to a different location. She said that meant it was not being collected. She asked the Council to speak to the neighboring property to help resolve the problem. The Council’s customer service team passed the information onto its waste collection service.
17. The Council sent Miss X its final response to her complaint in August 2019. It said the missed collections were because of access issues and it had installed bollards to prevent parking along the access to the communal bins. It referred to the collection of waste from block two and said it had introduced a smaller vehicle to collect waste from the communal bins and that the collection for that week had been collected. It did not refer to the collection for block one where Miss X lived.
18. In response to enquiries, the Council said that it had experienced difficulties accessing the bins for Miss X’s property for more than a year because of parked vehicles obstructing its access. It said most of the road was privately owned which meant it had limited enforcement options. The Council said it agreed with a local business to install bollards to restrict parking, but cars parked around the posts affecting access.
19. The Council said that since January 2020 it had transferred the collection of waste for Miss X’s property from the waste collection team to its cleansing team, which used a smaller vehicle. It hoped that would provide a consistent solution to collecting the waste.

Mr Z’s complaint

20. Mr Z lives in a block of flats and has communal plastic recycling bins. Between May 2019 and October 2019, the Council’s customer contact log indicates Mr X contacted the Council nine times to report missed collections. Two of these were to report rescheduled collections that the Council had not collected.
21. As Mr Z continued to report missed collections to the Council, it said a manager would contact him to resolve the problem. That did not happen despite Mr Z reporting further missed collections. In September 2019, the Council wrote to Mr Z and told him his complaint had reached the end of the complaints procedure. It directed him to the Ombudsman.
22. In response to enquiries the Council said the communal recycling bins were contaminated therefore it did not collect the bin through its recycling process but its recall service. It said it would change Mr Z’s bin to a wheeled bin to reduce third party contamination.
23. In response to my draft decision, Mr Z said a waste supervisor had visited him in January and agreed to keep the recycling box but move the recycling to a different area outside the building. Since then the Council had not missed a collection. The Council also provided a mobile number so he could directly report any missed collections.

Mrs Q’s complaint

24. Between May 2019 and November 2019, the customer contact record shows Mrs Q reported 8 missed food waste collections. The Council also provided emails it received from Mrs Q reporting a further three missed collections.
25. In August 2019, the Council sent Mrs Q a stage two response. It said there were difficulties for the waste collection vehicle turning into the road because of parked cars. It said it was looking at introducing a smaller vehicle but that would take several weeks. Mrs X responded to the Council and asked whether it would consider seagull proof bin bags so the rubbish could be collected by the smaller vehicle that already accessed the area.
26. In October 2019, after Mrs Q’s complaint had been through the Council’s complaint procedure twice, it sent her a final response. That said it would be making changes to the collection schedule.
27. In response to enquiries the Council said the difficulties with Mrs Q’s address were access issues as there were no parking restrictions in place. It said it had introduced a smaller vehicle and that it would monitor Mrs Q’s collections as of 1 January 2020.

Complaint’s about green waste collection

Mrs Y’s complaint

28. In May 2019 Mrs Y subscribed to the Council’s green waste collection service. The Council’s customer service record show she reported four missed collections between June 2019 and September 2019 and that the Council’s rescheduled collections occurred within the week.
29. Mrs Y said she reported four missed collections through the Council’s website. She said there were further missed collections she reported by telephone. She said that in response to her reports of missed collections the Council told her the binmen could not find the bin and asked her to take a photograph to show it was visible.
30. On 29 August the Council sent Mrs Y its final response. It said that because of the high level of demand for green waste collections its resources were stretched, and the service was not always able to make collections on the scheduled day. It explained it was looking at adding an additional day to its green waste collection schedule but that might change collection day. It said she paid £1.96 for each collection and the four missed collections came to £7.84. It offered to refund her £10.00 and apologised for the inconvenience.

Complaint by Mr R

31. Mr R said he contacted the Council in April 2019 after he received a green waste bin but no information what the collection dates were. He said the online collection calendar did not show collections for his address. He telephoned the the Council who sent him a garden waste calendar though the post.
32. Mr R said he put the bin out on the next two collections, but these were not collected. He emailed the Council’s customer services on 7 May 2019 and told them about the two missed collections.
33. In June 2019 the Council apologised for the missed collections and said it would monitor. Mr R told me he stopped putting the green waste out for collection as of June 2019 and stopped reporting it.
34. At the end of July 2019, the Council contacted Mr R, it said a waste manager would contact him to resolve the difficulties with his green waste collections. There is no evidence that happened.
35. In response to enquiries the Council said it had received only one report of a missed garden waste collection on 6 June 2019. It said it was aware there were problems with the website which it would rectify. It has offered to send Mr R a further collection calendar; arrange for a supervisor to attend during Mr R’s next scheduled collection and to offer him a refund for the service.
36. The Council has provided monitoring sheets for Mr R’s address from September – October 2019 these show the crew have attended and checked the bin.

Complaint by Miss W

37. The Council’s records show Miss W reported two missed green waste collections to the Council in April and August 2019. In addition to those two, Miss X said she also reported a missed collection in May 2019.
38. The Council sent Miss W a first stage response in August 2019. It explained there were difficulties with demand on the service which had resulted in the missed collections. Miss W was unhappy with the Council’s response as she was not receiving a service she had paid for. The Council offered to pay a refund of £10 for loss of service.
39. Following the Council’s final response, between October 2019 to December 2019, Miss W reported three further missed green waste collections.

The Council’s response to green waste collection

40. The Council said that demand for its green waste collection has outstripped the service’s capacity therefore it had not been able to complete all green waste collections. It said it told customers who complained but not all people who paid for the service.
41. It said it was in the process of redesigning its domestic waste rounds to release sufficient resources to add an additional day of green waste collection every week. It said it will start this by March 2020. It will then contact customers directly about the changes.
42. The Council said it was also in the process of commissioning an in-cab digital reporting system that is property based to electronically store collection records for green waste.

My findings

43. It is clear from the complaints that there have been failings in the Council’s waste collection service which amount to fault. We recognise that from time to time most people will have a problem with their waste collection. However, the number of complaints we have received about Thanet indicates there may be a wider problem.
44. The Council’s website reports which streets have missed collections and the reasons for this. There appears to be reoccurring issues with vehicle access with several streets.

The Council’s recording process for missed collections

45. Residents can report missed collections either on-line or by telephone. The Council records these in the customer contact records. In the complaints of Miss X, Mrs Q, and Miss W the customer contact records do not log all the missed collections the residents reported to the Council. Mrs Y also said she reported more than the four missed collections recorded in her customer contact record.
46. The Council did not transfer all the telephone contacts with the customer service centre, and the online reports of missed collections, onto the customer contact record. That was fault. That makes it more difficult for the Council to easily identify the number of missed collections a person has reported. That fault has caused the complainants an injustice as it has affected the Council’s ability to investigate the difficulties with the waste collection robustly.

The Council’s complaint and resolution process

47. In Miss X’s complaint, the Council’s investigation referred to changes it had made to the collection of waste from the flats in block two. Miss X lived in block one therefore I am not confident the Council considered the collection for her flats specifically. In January 2020, the Council passed the collections of her bins to a different service.
48. Despite seven reports of missed collections, the Council did not tell Mr Z that his recycling had not been collected because of contamination. That information has only been provided after Mr Z complained to the Ombudsman.
49. In the complaints of Mr Z and Mr R the stage two responses said a manager from the waste service would contact them to discuss the collection problems. That did not happen.
50. There was fault in how the Council investigated and responded to the complaints about waste collection. The investigations do not appear to have been robust enough to identify the cause of the problem and resolutions have not been put in place until after residents complained to the Ombudsman. That is fault and has meant problems have not been resolved as quickly as possible.

The green waste recycling service

51. The Council said it had struggled with the green waste collection service because of the level of demand. However, it did not tell residents about this unless they contacted it about missed collections. That approach has meant that residents have had to go to avoidable time and trouble of reporting missed collections, when it could have told them about the difficulties beforehand and what to do if it missed a collection. Although this is not a statutory service, it is reasonable for residents to expect to receive a service they pay for.

Agreed action

52. Within one month of my final decision the Council has agreed to:
• Apologise to Miss X, Mr Z and Mrs Q for the missed collections and pay them a financial remedy of £100 for the avoidable time and trouble in reporting missed collections.
• Apologise to Mrs Y and Miss W and refund them the cost of the year’s green waste collections to remedy the missed collections and the avoidable time and trouble taken in reporting missed collections.
• The Council has already agreed to refund Mr R’s green waste collection for the year.
53. Within two months of my final decision the Council has agreed to:
• Review how it collects information about missed collections to make sure both online and telephone contacts are entered onto the customer contact records.
• Review how it investigates missed collections and identify where there are recurrent problems.
• Based on the above, develop an action plan to resolve the identified difficulties.
54. The Council should also monitor the collections for all the complainants for the next three months.

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Final decision

55. The Council was at fault for failing to collect waste and refuse. The Council has agreed to my recommendations therefore I have completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman