Summary: The Council was at fault for repeatedly failing to collect the waste bins on Mr X’s road and for its poor complaints handling. It should apologise to Mr X and pay him £250 as a recognition of the distress and frustration this caused him and develop an action plan to help resolve the issue.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains that over the last three years the Council has, and continues to, repeatedly miss refuse collections on his street.
2. Mr X also complains about the Council’s poor complaint handling.
3. As a result, he says that unsightly and bad smelling refuse continually builds up which attracts vermin and other animals resulting in rubbish being strewn across the footpaths and roads. Mr X says this has caused him distress and is affecting his mental health. He also says the Council’s poor complaints handling has made this worse.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

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)
5. Mr X complains about missed refuse collections going back to 2018. I have started my investigation from August 2020. This is 12 months from when Mr X first made his complaint to the Council and just over 12 months from when he complained to us.
6. 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)
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. I spoke to Mr X and considered his view of the complaint.
9. I made enquiries of the Council
10. I wrote to Mr X and the Council with my draft decision and considered their comments before I made my final decision.

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What I found

Refuse and recycling collections

11. 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 type of bins or boxes people must use.
12. The Council's practice is to make a weekly household waste collection.
13. When a resident reports a missed collection, the depot will ask the crew to return to complete the round as soon as possible. When the Council has completed the collection, it closes the report.

What happened

14. In 2021, Mr X made a freedom of information request about the number of missed bin collections on his road. This showed that between August 2020 and September 2021, the Council had missed around 27 collections.
15. On 24 August 2021, Mr X complained to the Council. He said there was a general pattern of the Council missing the collection on his road every other week. He said that every time he complained the Council promised to send a crew within 48 hours but that never happened. Mr X said when the refuse crew did come the following week, they did not collect the overflow from the previous week. Mr X said he thought this was a deliberate tactic by the Council to reduce the number of collections in his area to once fortnightly in the hope no one would realise.
16. Mr X heard nothing from the Council about his complaint. On 22 September, Mr X complained again. He said that since making his complaint at the end of August, the Council had failed to collect the bins on his road a further three times.
17. The Council responded the same day. It apologised for the missed recycling collections in Road B. However, Mr X’s complaint was about general waste, not recycling, and he did not live in Road B.
18. Later that day, Mr X informed the Council of its mistakes. On 22 November, the Council responded. It apologised for the poor quality of its previous response. It said the standard sized refuse vehicle had issues accessing Mr X’s road because of parked cars and that collections were now being carried out by a narrower vehicle. The Council said it would monitor the situation from 23 November 2021 to 11 January 2022.
19. Mr X complained to the Ombudsman. He disputed what the Council said about access to the road saying the Council had collected from the road for 40 years and had never raised the issue of parked cars with residents before.
20. Mr X provided an update to us in March 2022. He said that the situation had not improved and the Council had failed to collect the bins on his road six times between 14 December 2021 and 22 March 2022, including three missed weeks in a row. Mr X sent photographs of the bins to illustrate the problem.
21. Mr X also sent us a copy of the Council’s response to a councillor who had complained on behalf of the residents in Mr X’s road. The Council said the missed collections were due to staff shortages. It made no reference to the road being difficult to access.

My findings

Missed bin collections

22. The Council’s records show it repeatedly and frequently failed to collect Mr X’s general waste on the scheduled day. This is fault.
23. In its second complaint response to Mr X, the Council said it would put monitoring in place for around six weeks. This did not resolve the issues because Mr X reported a further six missed bin collections, one of which fell within the monitoring period. Therefore, the fault remains ongoing.

Complaints handling

24. The Council sent Mr X a generic response to his complaint, advising him it would clear a missed collection within two working days if possible. The response failed to address Mr X’s complaint that the missed collections had been ongoing for many months and the crews failed to collect the excess rubbish that accumulated as a result. Matters were made worse by the fact the Council referred to the wrong road and the wrong type of refuse collection. This is fault.
25. The Council later told Mr X that the reason for the missed collections was because of access to the road. However, it gave a different reason to Mr X’s MP when he complained on behalf of the residents. The lack of clarity is fault.
26. These faults caused Mr X unnecessary frustration, time and trouble because he felt he had to complain to the Ombudsman to achieve a resolution to the problem. It has also led to him having a lack of faith that the Council is taking his complaint seriously and is willing to resolve the issues.
27. Having identified fault, I must now consider whether this has caused Mr X an injustice. Mr X has spent time and money in repeatedly visiting the tip to dispose of the uncollected household waste and recycling left at his property over a sustained period. 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.

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Agreed actions

28. Within one month of the date of the final decision, the Council agreed to:
• apologise to Mr X and pay him £250 in recognition of the distress, frustration and unnecessary time and trouble the Council’s repeated failure to collect his bins and its complaints handling has caused him; and
• write to Mr X with an action plan explaining what it will do to prevent repeated missed collections in the future. This should include monitoring of the situation.
29. Within three months of the date of the final decision, the Council agreed to provide us with an update on the action plan and results of the monitoring.

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Final decision

30. There was fault leading to injustice. The Council has agreed to my recommendations and so I have completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman