Residents across Kirklees have been left waiting weeks or even months for bin collections, with the council blaming staff shortages and sickness for ongoing disruption to waste services.
This week marked the eleventh week Meltham resident Sarah Smith had gone without a bin collection after moving into a new property. The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands that the waste was finally collected on Tuesday, 10 November.
This came after the family felt forced to privately hire skips due to the accumulating rubbish and had made a formal complaint to Kirklees Council.
Ms Smith said the council had blamed “staff shortages” and “operational challenges” for the absence of a collection.
She also expressed fears over the mounting rubbish and potential for vermin, adding: “It is just unpleasant but the frustration around the challenge of communicating with them [the council] outweighs everything”.
Cabinet Member for Place, Culture and Volunteering, Cllr Pip Harvey, has apologised for the situation.
She said: “I would like to sincerely apologise for the time it took to set up household waste collections for the property. I’m sure this must have been frustrating for the residents to resolve, especially while settling into a new home.
“We are investigating how this happened and will be putting processes in place to avoid issues like this in the future. We visited the property [yesterday] to talk to the residents and collect all the accumulated waste.”
Councillor raises concerns over repeated missed collections
The affected property sits within the Holme Valley North ward.
Ward councillor Cllr Charles Greaves has weighed in on this matter and the wider issue of missed bin collections across Kirklees.
He said: “Yet another week starts with more reports of missed bin collections. Weeks ago we were told that Kirklees Council had the situation under control – clearly they haven’t. The bin service is under intense pressure and whilst new staff are being recruited, they aren’t here yet.
“It isn’t good enough – but it is all that we are being offered. The only advice we can give to residents is to use the Kirklees system to report their bin as having been missed, and to then they leave the bin out for collection and hope that they are emptied – but when that will be no one seems to know.
“Councillor Richard Noon is working with Kirklees Council to sort out the problem that this family is having, but as the Waste team don’t seem to know exactly what the problem is, it isn’t easy. Perhaps focusing on bins and not culture wars might have been a better start for the new council leaders. I guess it depends on what is important to you.”
Businesses also affected by waste collection delays
At recent meetings, several other cases of missed bin collections have been brought to the attention of Cabinet.
Last week, Cllr Maryam Jawaid (Greens, Greenhead) told members she had received “a number of complaints” from businesses which had not had their bins collected for four weeks despite paying for trade waste collections.
She wanted to know the reasons for this, what action was being taken and when residents and businesses could expect a reliable service.
Cllr Harvey said there had been “a number of ongoing issues”, including “major long-term sicknesses” as well as short-term sicknesses, which had resulted in serious delays and disruption to the normal operations of the service.
At the time, she announced that 11 new team members had been recruited.
She continued: “What I’m looking at is focusing on a sustainable operation within the department and unfortunately at this moment in time there are issues which hopefully will not continue much longer. I can’t give time scales because there’s several factors to it. It’s not an issue like a broken-down vehicle.
“However, please be reassured – I am on top of it. I am holding officers to account. They are working extremely hard behind the scenes and we’re trying to do everything that we can to ensure the majority of bins are serviced and I can only apologise to residents and business owners who this has impacted.
“Believe you me, I am losing sleep over it and that’s how much I empathise and understand the frustrations of residents and business owners alike.”
Around 15,000 scheduled bin collections missed
Prior to this, at Cabinet in October, Cllr Toby Cooper (Greens, Greenhead) told of a “high volume of repeated operational issues” regarding missed bin collections across the Huddersfield area, with some residents left waiting up to two months.
At the time, Cllr Harvey said that around 15,000 scheduled bin collections were missed and not subsequently collected, and the council was looking at how this could be avoided in future.
Around 1,000 additional late collections were said to have been completed, with the service collecting 98 per cent of all bins as scheduled.
With these examples in mind and concerns growing around the level of missed bin collections, the LDRS asked Kirklees Council the reason for the disruption and what was being done to tackle the issue.
Cllr Harvey said: “Our waste crews have been under increased pressure recently due to staff shortages. Unfortunately, there is a national shortage of HGV drivers, which limits the number of agency drivers available to us when council employed drivers fall ill.
“Where a driver is unavailable, that impacts that round as well as how many missed bins can be collected by other drivers. Crews will always aim to return later in the week to collect missed bins, but that isn’t always possible. Grey bin collections are prioritised for public health reasons, so green bin collections have been more impacted.”
“To help minimise further disruption, we have recently hired three additional drivers, a number of refuse collectors have been promoted, and some agency drivers have been successful in joining the council permanently.”
