As you may be aware there have been severed delays in some refuse collections of all types of bins over the last few weeks. I have received the statement below from the Chief Officer of the service:
"Dear Councillor,
I am writing to let you know of some Refuse Service crewing up issues we are experiencing at the moment, leading to some missed scheduled collections and delays in recovering those misses within the usual 2 days we aim for. I know this is causing increased contact with some Members and some confusion about messages of whether/when missed collections will be recovered, for which I apologise.
The problem has been caused by a shortage of available cover for staff absences, which have spiked in the last couple of weeks. In order to cover staff absences (for annual leave, sickness etc) the service utilises a mixture of a pool of extra staff, overtime and agency. We have reduced our agency provision over the last 12 months, and so are more reliant of the pool of “spare” staff and volunteers for overtime to cover absences. Due to a number of coinciding factors the last week or so, the number of staff volunteering to cover through overtime has fallen, by enough to cause us some difficulties in getting the full 75 crews/wagons out on some days, and no back-up crews to do the catch up work. Our priority is to collect black and green bin waste and so the routes that have been stood have been garden waste/brown bin collections.
I have put in place measures to rectify this including:
- Further recruitment to driver and loader positions to increase the cover “pool” and reduce reliance on overtime;
- short term use of additional agency staff (being trained tomorrow);
- a recovery operation this Sunday to target missed garden waste collections from the last week or so (we will email the relevant ward members where these recovery collections are to be made separately).
We will continue to do all we can to recover the missed collections and as oon as we can; staff are working hard to minimise the impact. We hope to be back on a more even keel next week.
Thank you for your patience and support in the meantime and my apologies to any customers inconvenienced."
