Claim that 'more than a million' waste collections missed

Conservative councillors say one million collections have been missed

One million bin or recycling collections have been missed since the middle of May last year, according to Conservative councillors.

Last year, Swindon Borough Council launched a food waste collection service which made changes to the way other recycling is picked up.

To reach their figures, Tory councillors have counted a bin not collected on its allocated day as one missed collection, and say every day it remains uncollected counts as a separate incident.

That tally is disputed by members of the Labour administration who say it is "double and triple counting".

'Shambles all year'

The Conservatives say that each extra day rubbish remains uncollected counts as another separate missed day but Labour say it is more accurate to say just one missed collection.

A brand new fleet of lorries was deployed to coincide with the bin collection changes.

In January, residents faced bin bags stacking up on the street, which Swindon Borough Council has now put down to "systemic issues" while planning a new system of collection and recycling.

Councillor Gary Sumner, leader of the opposition Conservative group said, “It doesn’t matter whether you look at the old system of rubbish collection in Swindon or the new system introduced, it has been a shambles all year.

“December was the start of the new collection system and it went very well, but January has seen the service brought to its knees with an average 70% of homes missed.

He added, “the council is playing catch-up and chasing the problem instead of fixing it."

'Problems from 2022'

But Councillor Chris Watts, the Labour cabinet member for highways and the environment, said the issues with the collection system go back further than June last year when Labour took over the council.

He said many of the issues experienced now go back to some mistaken assumptions made in the planning phase in 2022.

He added: “It appears that a select few Conservative councillors want to focus on the effects but are unsurprisingly reticent to discuss the cause of the issues that happened under their watch," reported the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

“The problems that we are left with to resolve are systemic and deep rooted, but we will continue to work hard to rebuild the service," he added.

The deputy leader of the Conservative group, Councillor Dale Heenan said: “It has been a different excuse every week including too much cardboard and wrapping paper at Christmas.

“The council had no contingency plan for when things went wrong and it shows."