South Hams Councillor blames council "incompetence" for bin collection chaos
The local authority are defending their decisions, saying they have a collection backlog strategy now in place
A member of South Hams Council has accused it of “incompetence,” claiming council taxpayers’ money is “being squandered by complete fools” over its handling of waste collections.
Waste services, which have been outsourced to private company FCC Environment since April 2019, have been beset by problems, including missed collections and some vehicles being too large for some areas, according to South Hams.
When it was passed to FCC it was intended to mirror the service West Devon Borough Council has received from the same company for more than 10 years.
In March this year the waste management company changed some services in the South Hams to improve recycling rates.
But in June FCC apologised and admitted it faced problems because of higher than anticipated volumes of materials. It said the system was designed on the basis of recycling vehicles filling up once a day and being emptied at the end of the working day.
It also said increased volumes had resulted in the recycling depot filling up, making unloading vehicles and the onward operations "much more complex."
Cllr Julian Brazil (Lib Dem, Stokenham) said: "The actual number one priority of the council and what we should be doing, we’re totally failing on. And they were warned if they outsource, this is what might happen."
Council leader Judy Pearce, (Conservative, Salcombe and Thurlestone) rejected the claims. She said: "There is a national shortage of drivers all over the country. Waste collection services are in trouble. The reason for this is because the drivers of waste vehicles, either HGV or 7.5 tonne licence drivers, are finding that they can get paid higher wages if they go and work elsewhere.
"I know that there are problems around the country, recruiting staff. I know where there are vacancies upcountry with the same contractor because they just can’t get people to do the work. And I guess that other contractors are having the same problem."
But Cllr Brazil said: "The people suffering are the people in South Hams, who are getting a pretty shoddy service which is worse than it was before the new regime came in. Yet they’re paying a massive premium on top of it so they’re paying more for less.
"Our local residents are suffering because of their gross incompetence. Why can’t the general public, the council taxpayers of South Hams be told the truth about how their money is being squandered by complete fools?"
He also suggested the introduction of new rounds meant staff working on the lorries were deployed in unfamiliar areas.
"They did that by getting the dustbin lorry drivers in Kingsbridge to go and work in Ivyridge and the Ivybridge staff to come and work in the Kingsbridge area.
"And as a result, they lost all the local knowledge, all the experience. No one knew where the places were, where they were to go."
Cllr Pearce rejected claims that contracting out waste services had been a failure and said the situation would not have been any better if they were still in-house.
"We felt that a professional organisation that was managing crews across the country would be better at it, she said.
"And I do think that if we were in the present situation things could have been much worse at South Hams because we would not have the expertise in the wide stretch that FCC has got to call in people from other places where they haven’t got problems.
"But they’re in touch with all the agencies. They’re able to get replacement vehicles when they need them and all that kind of thing. But we as a council in South West Devon would have been far less expert at doing it."
Cllr Pearce also denied claims that other departments in the council had suffered as staff were redeployed to waste services.
"We have seconded some people, some of our officers to the depot to help on the supervision organisation, because that is another area where the contractor has had problems recruiting staff.
"It is not badly affecting the work of South Hams. There are some areas perhaps where more supervision would mean that they would be turning over better, but then we’ve got other people keeping an eye on them. So it’s not creating a critical situation anywhere else in the council."
But Cllr Brazil said it was inevitable that other services would suffer.
"I’ve yet to be told whether we are being compensated for these staff that we’re putting in because, as far as I can see, every single person in South Hams is now working for the contractor."
The council insisted strategies were in place for dealing with the backlog and moving forward.
"We will continue to make every effort to collect people’s black bins and their recycling," Cllr Pearce said but added that there may be further disruption in the short term.
"We have some brown bins suspended and that’s been on a day-to-day basis. It may be that we’ve got to be more formal on that and say, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t collect bins for the next … so many weeks’ until we see how the situation develops."
The council leader also said pressure on budgets has increased because of people with second homes in the area.
"We have so many second homes that don’t pay council tax because they pay business rates and they get small business rate remissions.
"So we don’t get anything for them. We are trying to run a district at the moment where the population is about twice what it normally is."
Meanwhile, residents are being asked to be patient and, if affected by non-collection, hold on to their garden waste until their next collection or use their local recycling centre where possible.