Summary: Ms Y complained about the Council’s failure to provide her with an effective assisted bin collection service and about its complaint handling. We have found fault by the Council in the service provided and the way it responded to Ms Y’s complaints, causing injustice. We consider the action now taken by the Council - an apology, improvements in its systems and a refund and waiving of collection fees - is an appropriate remedy for the injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I am calling Ms Y, complains the Council failed to provide her with an effective assisted bin collection service. It missed 15 bin collections between March 2021 and March 2022. Ms X says the Council failed to:

• take effective action to resolve the issue in response to her complaints each time a collection was missed; and
• escalate her concerns through its formal complaints procedure.

2. These failures caused the problem with missed collections to continue for longer than necessary and Ms Y had to make many complaints about this over a prolonged period.

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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 an organisation’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. I spoke to Ms Y, made enquiries of the Council, and read the information Ms Y and the Council provided about the complaint.
6. I invited Ms Y and the Council to comment on this draft decision. I considered their responses before making a final decision.

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What I found

Background

7. Ms Y is registered, for the Council’s free assisted bin collection service. In March 2021 Ms Y paid the Council a fee of £65 for the collection of her green waste every two weeks over the year from March 2021 to March 2022.
8. In May Ms Y reported a missed bin collection. There were further missed collections over the next few months, which Ms Y reported each time.
9. In July Ms Y asked the Council why this kept happening when it had assured her the issue had been raised with crew supervisors. After further missed collections and contact with the Council, she asked how she could escalate her complaint.
10. In October the Council told Ms Y her bin collection was being missed because the software that told crews who was on the assisted collection list was not in the vehicle used for her street’s collection. But a memo with details of her bin had been put in the crew pack and supervisors had made the crew aware of this.
11. Further collections were missed and reported by Ms Y to the Council. In December, Ms Y told the Council 12 collections had now been missed and asked again how she could escalate her complaint.
12. On 13 December Ms Y made a formal complaint about the missed collections. The Council issued its final response in February 2022 and said it:

• accepted records showed Ms Y had reported a significant number of missed bin collections;
• had not been able to determine why these had been missed but assumed it was because of genuine crew errors. It had asked the crew supervisor to monitor her collections over coming weeks to make sure they went ahead; and
• accepted she had been caused inconvenience, the service she had paid for had not been provided and she had had to raise complaints with it many times. It apologised for this and offered Ms Y £50 for inconvenience.

13. Ms Y was not satisfied with this response and brought her complaint to us. As at February 2022, there were 15 missed collections.
14. The Council then told Ms Y it was still unable to explain why her collections had been missed. It apologised for not escalating her complaint sooner and offered to refund her fee of £65 for the year 2021/2022.
15. The Council has now told us, in response to our investigation:

• Its system confirms Ms Y’s property is recorded as an assisted collection. It is rolling out electronic tablets to all crews showing the properties on their rounds which have assisted collections;
• Bins for properties requiring an assisted collection should have an orange sticker on them, which crews use to identify an assisted bin. As a back-up, crews are provided with paper print outs with details of assisted properties; and
• Its crews returned each time to make the missed collections reported by Ms Y. In addition to refunding Ms Y’s fee for last year (2021/2022), the Council has waived Ms Y’s fee for green waste collections for this year (2022/2023).

My findings - was there fault by the Council causing injustice?

16. The Council has accepted, and I agree, there were a significant number of missed collections. These together with its failure to effectively address this issue sooner, and the failure to escalate Ms Y’s complaint, were faults which caused her inconvenience, and for longer than necessary.
17. But I note the Council has apologised to Ms Y for its failures and taken action to address the reasons for the missed collections (I understand there have been no missed collections since January 2022). The Council has also refunded or waived green waste collection fees totalling £130 for the years 2021/2022 and 2022/2023.
18. On this basis I consider the actions taken by the Council are an appropriate way to remedy the injustice caused and I do not recommend any further action.

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Final decision

19. I have found fault by the Council, causing injustice. I have completed my investigation in the basis it has now taken appropriate action to remedy this injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman