Summary: Mr X complains the Council repeatedly failed to collect his household waste and recycling on the scheduled days or in a timely manner when collections were missed, for a period of seven months. The Council’s failure to make scheduled household waste and recycling collections from Mr X’s property amounts to fault. This fault has caused Mr X an injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mr X complains the Council repeatedly failed to collect his household waste and recycling on the scheduled days or in a timely manner when collections were missed, for a period of seven months.
2. Mr X also complains the Council failed to properly investigate his complaints or identify the reason for the missed collections and resolve the problem.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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)
4. 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

5. As part of the investigation, I have:
• considered the complaint and the documents provided by Mr X;
• made enquiries of the Council and considered the comments and documents the Council provided; and
• sent a statement setting out my draft decision to Mr X and the Council and invited their comments.

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What I found

Refuse 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. The Council's practice is to make a weekly household waste collection and a fortnightly recycling collection.
8. In September 2018 the Council introduced a new operating model. Under this model, scheduled collection days remained the same, but the collection rounds/routes changed.
9. At the end of December 2018 collection crews began industrial action. The Council introduced a contingency plan to make one collection for all waste types each week rather than separate collections of household waste and recycling. The crews began working to rule on 29 December 2018 and the first full day of industrial action was 19 February 2019.
10. The Council moved to a fortnightly collection for all waste types in February 2019. When the industrial action ended in mid-March 2019, the Council returned to weekly household and fortnightly recycling collections.
11. When a missed collection is reported to the Council, the Depot will ask the crew to return to complete the round as soon as possible. When the collection is complete, the Council closes the report.

What happened here

12. Mr X complains the Council failed to collect his or his neighbours’ household waste or recycling on the scheduled day for seven months. This led to an accumulation of waste which attracted vermin. Mr X complains that even when the Council began collecting the recycling on the scheduled day, it still failed to collect the household waste.
13. According to the Council’s records Mr X reported eight missed household waste collections and three missed recycling collections between January and May 2019. The reports are all closed which indicates the missed collections have since been made. However, the dates these reports were closed are inconsistent and do not suggest the collections were all made in a timely manner. The records also suggest that other collections were also missed.
14. For example, Mr X reported a missed collection on 21 January 2019 and the Council closed the report on 15 February 2019. This suggests that collections scheduled for 28 January, and 4 and 11 February 2019 were missed. Had the Council made these collections it could have closed the report sooner. Mr X also reported a missed collection on 5 February 2019, which the Council did not close until 25 February 2019. This is curious as if the Council made a collection on 15 February 2019, it could have closed both reports that day.
15. Similarly, Mr X reported missed collections on 9, 16 and 22 April and 1 May 2019. The Council closed the first three reports on 7 May 2019 but did not close the report of 1 May 2019 until 30 May 2019. It is unclear why, if the Council made a collection on 7 May 2019, it did not close all reports that day.
16. The Council states there may be a delay between the missed collections being made and the report being closed, so it is not necessarily the case that the intervening collections were also missed. However, the Council has not provided evidence of the dates the missed collections were made where they are different to the date the report was closed.
17. Mr X disputes that these collections were made. On 18 June 2019 Mr X made a formal complaint about the failings in service. He complained that it was 15 weeks since their household waste and recycling had been collected on the scheduled day. During this period their household waste had only been collected once. The missed collections affected all the properties in his stretch of the road which meant rubbish was again piling up on the street, attracting vermin. Mr X states he had repeatedly reported missed collections to the Council but as there was no response and nothing was done, he no longer reports them. He asked the Council to collect the rubbish immediately and ensure they had regular collections.
18. The Council’s response apologised for the reduced level of service and confirmed the waste should now have been removed. It stated the service had been disrupted had since January 2019 and this had resulted in missed collections. There were still a number of ongoing operational difficulties which it was working to resolve.
19. Mr X did not consider this resolved the problem as although the Council had collected the waste, it had still not made a scheduled collection. He did not consider a single, one-off collection sufficient. In August 2019 Mr X complained they their household waste had not been collected on the scheduled day for almost six months. There had been a few random collections on different days, so they never knew when the waste would be collected. The Council had recently started to collect the recycling on the scheduled day, and Mr X questioned why there were still problems with the household waste.
20. The Council again apologised for the poor service and confirmed it had escalated the matter to the depot service manager to prioritise Mr X’s collection. The Council explained the depot had experienced high levels of operational issues with both vehicles and staff. This had contributed to a series of missed collections, but plans were in place to avoid further inconvenience.
21. Mr X is unhappy with the way the Council has dealt with the matter and the length of time taken to improve the service. He states the problem was only resolved when he spoke to an officer at the depot who found his and his neighbours’ addresses had been removed from refuse collection schedule. Having identified the problem, the Council immediately reinstated the collections. Mr X is frustrated the Council took seven months to identify and resolve the issue.
22. In response to my enquiries the Council states that crews were reorganised following the implementation of five day working in September 2018. Due to an administrative error, the depot did not set up a household crew and a recycling crew to cover Mr X’s section of the road. It rectified this error in the middle of last year, and crews have made the scheduled weekly/fortnightly collections since then. It notes the last report of a missed collection from Mr X’s section of the road was in September 2019 which may have been due to a vehicle problem.
23. The Council has however set up a three-month period of monitoring to ensure there are no further issues.
24. In relation to Mr X’s concerns about the complaints process the Council states depot administrators use templates to ensures consistency of approach and content in response to complaints. It states the templates are intended to address the current situation and are regularly reviewed and updated. The Council considers its responses to Mr X’s complaints accurately reflected the situation at the time, that is, there were operational issues.

Analysis

25. It is clear from the documentation I have received that there have been repeated failings in the Council’s service which amount to fault.
26. The Council accepts that collections have been missed, and that there will have been delays in these missed collections being made. However, I do not consider the Council’s records of Mr X’s reported missed collections, when the collections were subsequently made are a reliable indicator of the extent of the problem. It is also concerning that the Council appears to have closed the reports of missed collections when the waste had not been collected.
27. Until the Council established collection crews for Mr X’s stretch of road there will not have been any scheduled household waste or recycling collections. Any collections would have been intermittent.
28. I recognise the Council has now resolved the problem, but I consider it should have done more to address Mr X’s repeated missed collections sooner. I would have expected the level of reported missed collections to have alerted the Council to a potential problem. This should in turn have prompted an investigation to identify and resolve the issue.
29. I also consider there to be fault in the way the Council dealt with Mr X’s complaints. Had the Council investigated Mr X’s complaints properly it would have identified much sooner that there were no collection crews assigned to his section of the road. The Council’s responses to Mr X’s complaints were generic explanations of the problems facing the waste collection service at that time. They did not address Mr X’s concerns or identify there was a particular problem with Mr X and his neighbours’ collection.
30. Having identified fault, I must now consider whether this has caused Mr X an injustice. Mr X has had to find ways to manage the uncollected waste left at his property and has experienced the associated the smell and mess of the uncollected waste, and the problem of vermin this has attracted. He has also experienced frustration and disappointment, both with the missed collections and the Council’s failure to resolve the problem. Mr X has been put to unnecessary time and trouble in trying to resolve this matter.

Agreed action

31. The Council has agreed to apologise to Mr X and pay him £250 in recognition of the frustration and difficulties the repeated failure to make regular household waste and recycling collections has caused.
32. The Council should carry out this action within one month of the final decision on this complaint.

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Final decision

33. The Council’s failure to make scheduled household waste and recycling collections from Mr X’s property amounts to fault. This fault has caused Mr X an injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman