Summary: Mx D complained the Council was regularly missing waste collections from a supported living facility. We have found the Council was not at fault.

The complaint

1. I will refer to the complainant as Mx D.
2. Mx D works at a supported living facility, and complains about problems with the Council’s waste collection from the site. Mx D says:

• from August 2024, the Council repeatedly failed to collect the waste from some of the bins on site. This caused the bins to overflow, presenting a significant hygiene problem to the site’s vulnerable residents and attracting rats and flies; and
• it is not clear when the bins are supposed to be collected, because the Council’s website says it will collect the general waste and recycling bins separately on alternating weeks, but in practice it has only ever collected them together fortnightly.

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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. 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

4. I considered evidence provided by Mx D and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
5. I also shared a draft copy of this decision with each party for their comments.

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What I found

6. Mx D works at a supported living facility for vulnerable adults. There are several buildings on the site, with a car park at the front. Around the car park there are three storage areas for waste bins.
7. Mx D says, in August 2024, the Council suddenly stopped collecting the facility’s bins. After reporting this several times to the Council, Mx D made a formal stage 1 complaint about it on 11 September.
8. Mx D said the Council had confirmed it would monitor collections for a month to ensure they were going ahead; but, while Mx D said the general waste bins had been collected the previous week, the recycling collection due the day before had not happened. Mx D said the bins were now attracting flies and vermin, presenting a health risk to those on site.
9. Mx D also said the Council had always collected both types of bins together once per fortnight, but the Council had now said the general waste and recycling bins should be collected separately on alternating weeks.
10. The Council responded on 16 September. It apologised for the missed collections, and said an officer had visited the site and confirmed one of the bin stores had not been emptied. The Council said a collection crew would attend the following day and collect all remaining waste. It also confirmed it had added the site to the crew’s ‘task sheet’, meaning they had to make a positive record when they completed the collection. This was to allow the Council to monitor the next three collections.
11. Mx D raised a stage 2 complaint on 18 September, saying the Council had only collected the waste from one of the three bin stores the previous day.
12. The Council responded on 30 September. It explained the crew were able to access one of the bin stores directly from the main road, but the other two stores were only accessible from the car park itself. The Council said the crew had taken a photograph which showed there was only a narrow gap between the kerb and a parked car. It said it would arrange for letters to be delivered to residents, asking them to be mindful of their parking on collection days.
13. Later on 30 September, Mx D replied to say all cars were parked in designated parking bays on site, and pointed out this had never caused problems before. The following day, Mx D referred the complaint to the Ombudsman.
14. Over the following months, the Council continued to monitor collections from the site. Mx D reported missed collections on several occasions, and the collection crew noted some problems with contaminated recycling bins.
15. In January 2025 there were widespread problems with waste collections due to inclement weather, which led to a missed collection at the site. However, the Council’s records showed the following collections were all completed correctly, until one further missed collection in February which the Council completed the following day. The records then show no further missed collections to date.

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Analysis

16. The Council has provided several pieces of information which document its collections, missed or otherwise, from the point of Mx D’s original report to the date of writing. This record is somewhat ambiguous in places, but it appears to confirm there were several occasions where the Council failed to collect one or more bins from the site over the last months of 2024.
17. The Council has said it sometimes found parked cars causing an obstruction, and has provided a photograph which appears to support this (on that occasion at least); but equally I acknowledge Mx D’s point there had been no problem with collections before August 2024.
18. The Council has also provided evidence to support its point the recycling bins have sometimes been contaminated with non-recyclable waste. Again though, this does not seem to explain the general inconsistency in the Council’s service, which has affected both general and recycling collections.
19. Ultimately, I do not consider I am in a position to resolve this; but either way, the Council’s records appear to show the site has received a consistent service since the beginning of the year, with only one missed collection, and that for reasons clearly beyond the Council’s control. The Council says it has not received any more reports of missed collections from Mx D in that time.
20. The Council has also said it has provided guidance to waste crews to ensure they know where the bins are, and to assist any non-regular crew members, and to remind them to report any access issues they have at the site.
21. I am satisfied there is nothing the Ombudsman could reasonably add to this by further investigation.
22. Turning to the other point of Mx D’s complaint, I asked the Council to confirm the schedule for collections from the site. It said the correct schedule was for the general and recycling waste to be collected individually on alternating weeks. The Council explained that, for operational reasons, it must sometimes collect both waste types together. It also said its investigation had established the crew was not always collecting the waste according to the schedule.
23. Again, I cannot conclude whether this explains Mx D’s experience, that previously the waste was always collected together, and on a fortnightly basis. Either way, I do not consider this point is significant enough to amount to fault, and nor do I see any reason to consider it has caused an injustice.

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Decision

24. I find no fault.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman