A borough council has been put on the spot over failings with its new bin collector.
Susan Hogg called for people in Maidstone to be compensated for “poor service” from waste collection service Suez.
The Tovil resident, who lives in Beaconsfield Road, addressed councillors from Maidstone Borough Council at the last full council meeting about the problems people have faced.
Maidstone is one of three councils that jointly contracted with Suez Recycling and Recovery UK in a £152m deal to take over waste collections from the previous company, Biffa, in March. The other two authorities were Swale and Ashford
Almost immediately across all three boroughs, there were outcries of missed bin collections, with some households waiting weeks to have their garbage removed, and some resorting to paying private firms to take their rubbish away.
Cllr Clive English, the cabinet member with responsibility for waste collection, said: “I think it is fair to say that the start of the refuse contract was a little bumpy – I speak with understatement.
“However, over the last few months – and I must pay tribute to the staff of Maidstone council for their tremendous efforts in putting the show back on the road – we have reached a position where 98% of collections are being done according to the schedule.”
“Now of course it doesn’t take a great mathematician to work out that still leaves a significant number of properties in the borough (being missed) and there are still some issues.
“We are working through those issues, which are mostly now with hard-to-reach or hard-to-find properties in relatively obscure locations or with properties where there are complexities in terms of the delivery, or with properties which have a communal management company involved, which poses issues which are often not down to Suez.
“We have also experienced a number of fly-tipping incidents where communal bin stores have been interfered with by fly-tippers and that again has made collection difficult.”
Cllr English may have been thinking here of incidents like that experienced by the residents of Bluecoast Yard in Maidstone’s Knighrider Street who have frequently had the collection of their recycling bins refused because of contamination with non-recycling materials, that possibly may have been placed there by somebody other than the flats’ residents.
Cllr English continued: “We are getting to a position where I am reasonably confident that we will once again have a service to be proud of.”
He said: “The impact in terms of finance on residents has mostly been in terms of the garden waste collection which is a paid-for additional service.
“We will be looking at how we deal with extending that facility to those people that have paid for that service and have not received it.
“That will be on a case-by-case basis.
“And we will be discussing a number of changes to the garden waste collection, which will be presented to the cabinet in the next few weeks.”
Cllr English told Mrs Hogg: “Thank you for your question and for keeping our eye on the ball.
