County chief says waste collection will improve in next week or so

* Graham Boase, chief executive of Denbighshire County Council.

Denbighshire County Council underestimated the resources needed in the early stages of rolling out its controversial new waste recycling system.

That is the admission from the authority’s chief executive Graham Boase in an email to llanblogger.

But he predicts that the number of missed collections will “significantly reduce” over the next week or so.

The new system – based on stackable Trolibocs rather than the old-style wheelie bins – was brought in for 43,000 properties across the county on June 3.

But it has led to a huge number of complaints from people – many from Llangollen - whose weekly collections have been missed.

Llanblogger’s Phil Robinson, who recently reported the issue to the public services Ombudsman for Wales, also wrote personally to the chief executive to ask for his observations on what has rapidly become a crisis of confidence in the organisation he heads.

Mr Boase responded: “You will have seen that both myself and the Leader of the Council have issued apologies for the issues associated with the roll out of our new waste and recycling service.  We have also said we acknowledge that apologies are not going to get the bins emptied.

“This is a major change involving a new collection regime across the whole of the County i.e. some 43,000 properties.

“It is clear we have underestimated the resources required in the initial phase of the roll out.

“This has resulted in a larger number of missed collections than we had anticipated, meaning that the planned mitigation for ‘mopping up’ those missed collections is currently insufficient to cope with the demand.

“This is despite careful planning, consulting with other authorities using the same system and receiving advice from WRAP (a climate change NGO – Non Government Organisation).

“We have identified temporary additional resources that will allow us to catch up, relook at some of routes etc to ensure no more missed collections.

“This will not happen immediately, but the number of missed collections will significantly reduce over the next week or so.

“Our new waste/recycling service allows for an increased emphasis on recycling, where quality kerb side separated material can be sold, as opposed to paying for the comingled material to be taken for separation, after which the quality of the material is often inferior. This is a model employed by the majority of Council’s in Wales so it works, but we accept we could and should have done better with our roll out.

“As I’m sure you can appreciate, I am receiving lots of correspondence at the moment due to the numerous issues we have encountered in the roll out of our new waste and recycling system. It is therefore difficult to respond to detailed questions as we don’t currently have the time, as we are trying to address the issues.”