Summary: Mr X complained the Council failed to provide an adequate refuse collection service. The Council was at fault for repeated missed collections, and for issues with its complaints handling. The Council will apologise and pay Mr X £100 for the frustration caused by repeated missed collections and the time and trouble taken trying to resolve his complaint. The Council will also consider what actions it should take to improve its service and remind its staff about proper complaints processes.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained the Council failed to provide an adequate refuse collection service from June 2020 to August 2021. Mr X said he had to go to significant time and trouble to contact the Council after the missed collections and the build-up of waste was hazardous and unpleasant.

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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)
4. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended). Mr X told me he complained to the Council four times in 2020. I have seen no reason to exercise discretion to investigate the entire of 2020. I have therefore investigated the missed collections from June 2020, a year before Mr X complained to the Ombudsman.
5. When considering complaints, if there is a conflict of evidence, we make findings based on the balance of probabilities. This means that we will weigh up the available relevant evidence and base our findings on what we think was more likely to have happened.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I have considered:
• all the information Mr X provided and discussed the complaint with him;
• the Council’s comments about the complaint and the supporting documents it provided; and
• the Council’s policies, relevant law and guidance and the Ombudsman's guidance on remedies.
7. Mr X and the organisation had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

Background

Household waste and recycling collections

8. Councils have a duty under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to collect household waste and recycling from properties in its area. The Council collects general waste weekly and recycling fortnightly on alternate weeks. It has red recycling bins for paper and card and blue recycling bins for other dry recyclable items.
9. The Council’s website says it will only collect a missed bin if it is missed through no fault of the resident and if it is reported by the end of the next working day. It will try and carry out a recollection as soon as possible. Otherwise, it collects the bin on the next scheduled collection.

Complaints handling

10. The Council has a two stage complaints process. It will respond to stage one in ten working days. It will respond to a stage two complaint in twenty working days.

What happened

11. Mr X lives in a block of flats with communal waste and recycling bins. In March 2021, Mr X complained to the Council. He said it had been regularly missing his refuse and recycling collections and was only doing recollections infrequently.
12. The Council responded at stage one the following week to say it would arrange for a supervisor to speak to the refuse crew and visit his home on collection day to ensure the waste was picked up. Mr X contacted the Council in April to say the situation had not improved and asked for a stage two response.
13. In late June 2021, Mr X told the Council that since May there had been an improvement with the general waste. He said the recycling collections were still poor and he was concerned the Council was collecting it as general waste. He was unhappy it had not responded to his stage two complaint.
14. Mr X complained to the Council again in mid-August because it had still not responded to his stage two request. He said the recycling collections had not improved. It had missed the past four collections. Mr X said he had not reported them as missed because when he did so, the Council collected them as general waste.
15. The Council responded to Mr X’s stage two complaint in late August. It said it had visited Mr X’s home the day before. It said two of the three communal recycling bins were empty that day and one had non-recyclable items in it. It said parking sometimes prevented it accessing his property and it had asked Kent County Council about whether it would introduce parking restrictions. It told Mr X it would monitor his collections for six weeks. The Council responded to Mr X’s August complaint the following week. It added that its crews were told to collect any recycling that contained the wrong material as general waste.
16. I asked the Council to send me the outcomes of the monitoring period referred to in its complaint response. The Council sent me a record which shows it had placed a ‘do not miss’ alert on Mr X’s refuse collections from mid-July to late December 2021. It said the alert reminds crews that they must not miss a certain property and required them to confirm when they had completed that collection. The Council also confirmed it contacted Kent County Council in August 2021, which said it was unlikely to introduce parking restrictions to the streets near Mr X’s home.

The Councils response to my enquiries

17. In response to my enquiries, the Council said Mr X made nineteen missed collection reports from June 2020 to August 2021; seven refuse and twelve recycling. The Council recorded eleven missed collections in that period. I asked the Council for records of when it carried out recollections. The records show half of the missed collections Mr X reported were recorded as ‘closed as noted’ and half as ‘closed as completed’. Many of cases were closed on the same day, sometimes weeks after the missed collection. The Council told me some of its records may be inaccurate due to issues with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
18. The Council also said it recently became aware Mr X’s block of flats did not have a red recycling bin for paper and card. This meant residents were putting paper and card in the blue recycling bin, which contaminated it and contributed to the missed collections. It said it normally expects residents or the property developer to buy missing bins, but it had supplied them itself. It said parking still occasionally prevented collections but there had been an improvement. There had been one missed collection reported at Mr X’s block of flats between September 2021 and February 2022.

Findings

19. The Ombudsman accepts there will be circumstances which occasionally prevent a council from doing a collection. However, Mr X reported nineteen missed collections in a fifteen month period. While the Council only has records of eleven missed collections in that period, I still consider that represents failure to provide an adequate service and was fault.
20. Mr X says the Council did not regularly carry out recollections after he made reports. The Council's policy states it will try and carry out a recollection as soon as possible after someone submits a missed collection report. The Council's records do not clearly evidence if and when it carried out recollections and the Council has accepted some of its records may not be accurate. Because there are no accurate records, I cannot know for sure whether the Council completed the recollections. However Mr X has made previous complaints about missed collections and we upheld a previous complaint about the same matter, so on the balance of probabilities, I consider it more likely than not that the Council did not complete recollections, which was fault. The faults identified in paragraphs 19 and 20 caused Mr X frustration and meant he went to avoidable time and trouble reporting the missed collections in order to have a recollection.
21. In response to Mr X’s complaints, the Council said it would speak to the refuse team and send someone out to visit the property. It explored whether Kent County Council would impose parking restrictions and identified that Mr X’s flats were missing a red recycling bin. This meant the existing bin was being contaminated. It supplied a red bin free of charge. The steps the Council took were suitable to address Mr X’s concerns and appear to have improved matters.
22. However, in its stage two response in late August, the Council also told Mr X it would monitor his collections for a period of six weeks. When I asked the Council for the outcome of its monitoring it sent me evidence it had placed a ‘do not miss’ alert on Mr X’s property from July 2021, before it responded to his complaint. The alerts were also only on Mr X’s refuse collections, not his recycling collections, which were the main subject of his stage two complaint. Finally, I do not accept that placing an alert on Mr X’s collections amounts to monitoring. Monitoring should involve oversight of collections and consideration of what to do if collections are missed. The Council's evidence does not show it did this. The Council was therefore at fault for failing to carry out the monitoring as stated in its complaint response. This did not cause Mr X a significant injustice because the evidence shows collections have improved since August 2021.

Complaints handling

23. Mr X complained to the Council in March 2021. In April he escalated his complaint to stage two. The Council did not respond to Mr X’s stage two complaint until late August. The Council took significantly longer than the 20 working days in its policy, which was fault. The delay caused Mr X undue frustration and meant he had to make a second complaint in mid-August in order to receive a response.

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Agreed action

24. Within one month of the date of my final decision, the Council will apologise to Mr X and pay him £100 for the frustration and time and trouble he experienced because of the Council's failure to provide an adequate collection service, carry out recollections and the delay in sending its stage two complaint response.
25. Within three months of the date of my final decision, the Council will:
• review its processes for monitoring residents’ collections to ensure that when it agrees to do this, there is sufficient oversight and the monitoring leads to improvements in the service provided;
• review its recollection processes to ensure it completes recollections where appropriate and keeps accurate and up to date records of when recollections are made; and
• remind its staff they should issue complaints responses in accordance with the timescales set out in its complaints policy.

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Final decision

26. I have completed my investigation. I have found fault leading to personal injustice. I have recommended action to remedy that injustice and prevent reoccurrence of this fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman