Summary: Miss X complained the Council repeatedly failed to collect her bins. As a result, Miss X had to make several reports and complaints to the Council. We have found the Council was at fault as it did not collect Miss X’s bins in line with its published policy. We recommend the Council apologise to Miss X and carry out a period of monitoring on her bin collections.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council has repeatedly failed to collect the bins from her flat’s communal storage area. Miss X says this has continued for over a year despite her many reports.
2. Miss X says this has caused a lot of stress and means she has had to keep chasing the Council.

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What I have investigated

3. I have investigated whether the Council collected Miss X’s bins in line with its published policy between July 2020 and August 2021. I have also investigated if there is any fault in the way the Council responded to Miss X’s reports of missed collections.
4. I have not investigated any missed collections prior to July 2020. I have given my reasons at the end of this decision.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

5. 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)
6. 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)
7. 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

8. As part of the investigation, I have:
• considered the complaint and documents provided by Miss X;
• made enquiries of the Council and considered the comments and documents the Council provided;
• discussed the issues with Miss X.
9. Miss X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on a draft decision before I made this final decision.

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What I found

Refuse and recycling collections

10. Councils have a duty under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to collect household waste and recycling from properties in their area. The collections do not have to be weekly and councils can decide the bins or boxes people use.
11. The Council’s website explains it will collect recycling weekly and general household rubbish fortnightly.
12. Service users can report missed collections to the Council either online or by telephone. The Council will then check this against its own records and collect missed collections within two working days.

The Council’s complaint procedure

13. The Council’s policy says it will acknowledge complaints within three working days. It will then assess whether to investigate the complaint and provide an answer to this within seven days.
14. Complaints to be investigated are passed to an investigating officer. The Council says it will respond to complaints within 20 working days, or 30 working days if the complaint is particularly complex.

Good Administrative Practice

15. The Ombudsman published a guide to help local authorities understand the founding principles of good administrative practice in December 2018.
16. This document explains that organisations working on a council’s behalf should adhere to the council’s policies, guidance, and good practice legislation. It also explains councils should have appropriate skills and capacity to effectively manage third-party suppliers delivering services on its behalf.
17. Where things go wrong, the guide sets out councils should put them right quickly and effectively. They should ensure the quality of complaint investigation is the same whether the council handles it or a contractor.

What happened here

18. Miss X complains she has had issues with bin collections since early 2019. Miss X says these were sporadic but are missed much more frequently recently.
19. Miss X says she has made several reports to the Council since then, but it continues to miss collections.
20. The Council says it received just one report of a missed collection from Miss X since July 2020 and this came on 4 September 2020. It says it had not collected the bin for three weeks at this point but its collection team was due the following day. The Council says it reminded the collections crew to collect the bin.
21. Miss X says the Council only collected the bins once a month. She says she reported every missed collection until 4 August 2021.
22. Miss X says her emails often went ignored and when she telephoned the Council it re-directed her to the online contact form to report missed collections.
23. I asked Miss X for evidence of her contact with the Council from July 2020. The evidence provided did not show any missed collections reported from July 2020 until May 2021.
24. Miss X complained to the Council on 4 May 2021 saying it had not emptied her bin store for the past two months despite repeated reports. She explained she had approached collection staff as they drove by, but they still failed to collect her bins.
25. Miss X was assigned a complaint handler and emailed them on 6 May to explain the bins still had not been collected. Miss X said she had assumed that her complaint would also be registered as a report of the missed collection.
26. Miss X’s bin store was then emptied on 7 May.
27. On 19 May, Miss X emailed her complaint handler to explain the bins were not collected the previous day as they should have been. The complaint handler agreed to pass this information on to the collection team.
28. Miss X emailed the complaint handler again on 20 May and 21 May as the bin still was not collected but she received no response.
29. Miss X sent a further email on 24 May due to non-collection and the complaint handler again agreed to raise this with the collection team.
30. The Council responded to Miss X’s complaint on 1 July. The Council said this took longer than the maximum 30 days set out in its complaints procedure because its officer was on annual leave. However, it kept Miss X updated on the delay.
31. The Council explained it was currently collecting bins from Miss X’s communal bin store weekly rather than fortnightly as scheduled. The investigator said they had made site visits and found the bin stores to be tidy which would suggest collections had taken place. However, they said they had seen the recycling was contaminated which may have contributed to missed collections.
32. The Council said the bin store was used by another block of residents as their own bin store was damaged in a fire. It suggested the bins may look fuller because of this, despite it making collections.
33. The Council did not uphold Miss X’s complaint as it felt it had fulfilled its duties. However, it did make several recommendations that it felt would improve things for Miss X. This included locking the bin stores so only the right residents could use them, reviewing the bin storage capacity in the area, and reviewing how residents parked to make easier access for the bin lorries.
34. Miss X replied on 3 July. She told the Council it had not collected the bins weekly as suggested. She explained the contaminated recycling was not a regular event but may have happened due to the general waste not being collected. Miss X pointed out the parking on the road had never previously prevented rubbish collections.
35. Miss X has evidenced she complained to her maintenance company about a missed collection on 7 July who then raised this with the Council.
36. On 16 July, the Council responded to Miss X.
37. It explained its vehicle tracking system showed crews had been attending the site when they should have been. It reiterated the bin stores were tidy during site visits, other than contaminated recycling, which would indicate collections were taking place. It repeated its point that residents should lock bin stores to prevent unauthorised dumping and that some parking practices on the road made it difficult for the collections team to drive to the bin store.
38. As she remained unhappy, Miss X referred her complaint to the Ombudsman in July 2021.

Analysis

39. We do not usually investigate complaints raised more than 12 months after the complainant ought to have been aware they had reason to complain. We can exercise discretion to investigate late complaints where it may not have been reasonable to bring the complaint to us sooner.
40. I will not investigate whether there was fault by the Council prior to July 2020. This was more than 12 months before Miss X contacted us and I can see no good reason she could not have raised issues that occurred before that point with us sooner.
41. There is a direct conflict about how many times Miss X says she reported missed collections and how many the Council says it received. I am not able to say for sure how many reports were made, but on balance, I think it is reasonable to say there were more than the one on 4 September 2020.
42. I say this because Miss X’s complaint email from May 2021 mentioned missed collections and she sent several emails in the weeks after to point out further missed collections. Miss X has also said the maintenance company who takes care of her block has been in touch with the Council about the missed collections.
43. Although the information available to me does not seem to be complete, I think there is enough to say the Council is at fault as it failed to ensure it collected Miss X’s bins regularly or followed up missed collections in line with its policy. This has caused an injustice to Miss X as she has had to chase the Council to ensure it made or rescheduled collections.
44. The Council’s complaint procedure says complaints will be responded to within 20 working days unless they are particularly complex, in which case it will be within 30 working days. The Council is at fault for missing this deadline after Miss X raised her complaint.
45. It is not unusual for staff absences or annual leave to delay complaint investigations. However, Miss X’s complaint does not appear to be particularly complex, so it is unclear why this was not dealt with within 20 days. In any case, the Council ought to have processes in place to ensure annual leave does not delay answers getting to its service users. The Council is at fault for not responding to Miss X’s complaint in the timescales set out in its published policy.

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Recommended action

46. To remedy the injustice identified above, we recommend the Council:
47. Within one month:
• Provide Miss X with a written apology for failing to ensure her bins were collected as they should have been.
• Begin two months of monitoring to ensure Miss X’s bin collections are taking place as scheduled. This should include a record showing the dates of any collection, reasons for any missed collection and, actions to reschedule missed collections where necessary.
48. Within three months:
• Put a process in place to ensure complaints are passed to another member of staff when the original complaint handler is out of the office and provide evidence of this to the Ombudsman.
• Send the Ombudsman its record of monitoring.

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Final decision

49. We find fault with the Council for failing to ensure Miss X’s bins were collected regularly and make the recommendations set out above.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

50. I did not investigate whether there was any fault in the Council’s waste collection service prior to July 2020. This is because the events took place more than 12 months ago and I can see no good reason why Miss X could not have raised this with us sooner.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman