Summary: Mr X complained about repeated missed bin collections and the Council’s delay in responding to his complaints. The missed collections were a service failure and this is fault which caused Mr X frustration and inconvenience. The Council has already apologised to Mr X and it has agreed to provide a suitable financial remedy. The Council and its contractors will also take steps to continue monitoring the service.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained that the Council has consistently failed to provide a reliable general household waste and recycling collection service at his property. He says he received no service at all between May and September 2022. As a result he had to take his waste and recycling by car every week to the local recycling centre. This caused considerable frustration and inconvenience.
2. Mr X says the recycling collection is still being missed. It has not improved since the Council made changes to put the property on a different round in December 2022. He says the Council has failed to provide a basic statutory service. He has been put to time and trouble in reporting missed collections online or by phone and transporting his waste to the recycling depot. The Council upheld his complaint but Mr X is not satisfied with the payment of £75 it made to recognise the impact on him.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about councils and certain other bodies. Where an individual, organisation or private company is providing services on behalf of a council, we can investigate complaints about the actions of these providers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 25(7), as amended)
4. We investigate ‘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)
5. 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

6. I have spoken to Mr X and considered all the information he sent me. I considered the Council’s replies to Mr X’s complaint at both stages of its complaints procedure. I also considered the Council’s response to my enquiries.
7. Mr X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered their comments before making a final decision

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What I found

Background

8. 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 what bins or boxes people must use. Councils may also tell their residents where they must place their bins or boxes, and when, for collection.
9. Buckinghamshire Council contracts out its waste and recycling service. In November 2021 a new company, which I shall call Company A, took over the contract. Although the Council contracts out waste services, it is still responsible for ensuring the quality of the service and it is accountable if things go wrong.
10. If the waste contractor fails to collect a bin, fully empty it, or return it, the Council puts the address on an ‘assured’ property list. This highlights to the contractor that there has been repeated service failure at the address. When an address is on this list, the waste management contractor should monitor the collections more closely to resolve the service issue.
11. When the Council responded to another complaint we investigated about missed collections, it said it now receives weekly reports about ‘repeat miss’ collections. And its officers emailed its contractor, in line with the escalation point/contact, to ensure ‘repeat miss’ cases were investigated. Such investigations also included a site visit. ‘Repeat miss’ cases were also discussed at its regular contractor meetings. The Council also said its waste team received complaints training in October 2022.
12. The Council has a two stage complaints procedure:
• Stage 1: A senior officer from the service will oversee the complaint investigation. The Council will provide a written response to the complaint within 20 working days.
• Stage 2: A monitoring officer will decide whether to consider the complaint at stage 2 of the process. If the Council does not accept the complaint, it will tell the complainant within five working days. If the Council accepts the complaint, the deputy monitoring officer or manager will undertake the complaint investigation. The Council will provide a written response within 20 working days. If this is not possible, the Council will let the customer know and give a new timescale.

What happened

13. Mr X lives in a small block of flats. He and the other residents place their household waste and recycling in standard wheeled bins in a private car parking area located behind the flats and shops.
14. There are two vehicle access points to the car parking area: a barrier controls access from one road.
15. Mr X’s property is due to have a weekly collection on Thursdays. Domestic food waste and general household refuse is collected one week and recycling (plastic, glass, paper and card) is collected on the alternate week.
16. Mr X first noticed collections were being missed in May 2022 when the Council’s waste contractors, “Company A”, changed the property to the communal collection round. He reported missed collections by telephone or through the online reporting system.
17. Mr X says that between May and September 2022 no waste or recycling was collected from the premises. He took all his waste and recycling by car to the recycling centre. He said he made a weekly trip which took about twenty minutes. This was extremely frustrating, time-consuming and inconvenient.
18. The Council says its records show collections were made between May and October 2022. It says Mr X reported missed collections on the following dates:

10/07/2022 - recycling - escalated complaint

20/07/2022 - recycling - missed

23/08/2022 - refuse - crew reported the gate was locked

26/08/2022 - refuse - not presented - logged by crew

28/10/2022 - recycling - missed 

19. The Council told me Mr X’s property was added to the Assured List when it received his first report of a repeat missed collection. This creates a task on the crew's onboard tablet to remind them to collect the waste and swipe the task off when complete. The property is still on the Assured List. As Mr X is still not satisfied with the service, the Council told me it will ask for the level of monitoring to increase.
20. In November 2022 Mr X’s property was moved back on to the main domestic collection round. It says Mr X reported one missed paper and card recycling collection since then on 13 January 2023.
21. Mr X told me there has been some improvement with general household waste collection since he escalated his concerns again at the end of January 2023. But collections are still missed from time to time. In particular the paper and card waste is still not collected regularly. He finds its extremely frustrating to keep having to report the missed collections.
22. Mr X is also dissatisfied with the time it took the Council to reply to his complaint at both stages of the complaints procedure.
23. Mr X told me he wants the Council to recognise it failed to provide a statutory service. He does not want the Council to blame its contractors because it has the duty to provide an effective domestic waste collection service. He says the service has been unacceptable. He does not consider the £75 paid at the final stage of the complaints process adequately recognises his time and trouble in reporting missed collections, making the complaint and the nuisance and inconvenience of having to take waste to the dump.
24. Mr X says other residents in his block have also been affected. He understands they have also complained and reported the missed collections. The Council’s records show it received five reports from the resident of another flat in Mr X’s block between June and August 2022.

The Council’s complaint-handling

25. Mr X made a Stage One complaint to the Council on 28 July 2022. He did not get a response until 7 October. The Council apologised for the delay and upheld his complaint about the waste collection service. It said a reorganisation of the service in May 2022 had caused some disruption. It resulted in some missed collections, reports of missed collections were wrongly closed as resolved and contractors did not return to pick up missed collections within expected timescales.
26. Mr X was not satisfied so he asked for his complaint to be escalated to Stage Two on 7 October. He complained about the delay in responding to his complaint, the poor service he received and the inadequate management of the waste collection contract.
27. The Council sent the Stage Two response on 12 December 2022. It apologised for the delay. It reviewed the records and accepted Mr X had reported a significant number of missed collections and had frequently contacted the Council. A site visit was made to establish the reason for the missed collections. It was thought that the collection crew may have been using the wrong road to access the area where the bins are kept. The collection crews were instructed to access the bins from the road behind the flats. The crew were also given a “learning pack” which included a site map and photographs showing the location of the bins. The Council upheld Mr X’s complaint and paid him £75. It said this amount was in line with our published Guidance on Remedies.
28. The Council says the delay in responding to Mr X’s complaint at Stages One and Two resulted from an increase in complaints about the waste collection service between June and August 2022. These complaints had to be considered along with complaints about other Council services.
29. When it replied to my enquiries in late February 2023, the Council said it would task the supervisor to meet the collection crew on site at the scheduled time of collection to identify the exact location of the bins and monitor the collection taking place. It confirmed Mr X’s property is still on the assured list. The collection crews have been reminded about the location of the bins and supervisors will meet the crew on site on collection days for four weeks.
30. Our records show the Ombudsman has upheld four other complaints about the Council’s waste and recycling service since May 2022. In two cases we recommended service improvements. The Council says it has taken the following action to resolve issues with the service and tackle the volume of complaints:
• vacancies have been filled;
• further training has been delivered within the Council and Company A;
• a new contract management team is monitoring the contract and there has been a significant improvement in the number of missed bin collections.

My findings

31. Residents will sometimes have to report an occasional missed bin collection. But Mr X suffered frustration and inconvenience due to the frequency of the missed collections and the fact that his reports were sometimes wrongly recorded as having been resolved. The Council says its records do not support Mr X’s statement that there were no waste collections from his property between May and September 2022. But it accepts there was a significant number of missed collections in this period and the service was poor. Mr X took his waste to the recycling centre when collections were missed which was inconvenient and time-consuming.
32. The Council exceeded its timescales for replying to Mr X’s complaint at both stages of its complaints procedure. This delay added to Mr X’s frustration and distress.
33. I considered whether the Council’s payment of £75 was a suitable remedy. We do not specify financial remedies for upheld complaints about waste collection in our Guidance on Remedies. However we do set out the factors we take into account when we assess the impact and injustice. In this case, £75 does not properly recognise the frustration, time and trouble and inconvenience Mr X experienced. He had to report the missed collections, take his waste to the recycling centre and wait a long time for his complaint to be investigated. We recommend modest financial remedies and a payment of £150 in total would provide a fair and proportionate remedy in this case.
34. The Council apologised to Mr X when it replied to his Stage Two complaint so I have not asked it to make a further apology now.

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Agreed action

35. Within one month of my final decision, the Council will pay Mr X an additional £75.
36. Mr X’s priority is to have a reliable waste and recycling collection so he does not have to keep reporting missed collections. With this in mind, the Council should continue to monitor the waste and recycling collection service at Mr X’s property for a further two months. It should check with Mr X whether the current issue is only with missed recycling collections and make spot checks on the scheduled collection days to ensure this waste has been collected. At the end of this two month period, it should contact Mr X again to ask if he is satisfied with the service. If the problems persist, it should extend the monitoring arrangement.
37. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

38. I have completed the investigation and found the failure to provide a reliable waste collection service was fault and this caused injustice to Mr X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman