Plymouth defends four day collection system

The council acknowledged that it had received an average of 200 phone calls a day relating to waste collections in the immediate aftermath of the change to its collection systems that was introduced in November 2008.

However, it said that this figure had been reduced “by about 30%” since then, and claimed that, while the service was undergoing “fine-tuning”, waste was being collected from households in the city.

A spokeswoman for the Plymouth city council told letsrecycle.com: “We would like to emphasise that the majority of streets have had their rubbish and recycling collected without incident, although we are conscious that, for some people, their experience of the changes has fallen short of the standard they should expect from us.”

Plymouth had moved to a four-day collection week in order to allow it to perform maintenance on its collection vehicles every six weeks and cater for housing growth and the changing topography of the city.

Disruption

The disruption caused by the change in the system, which included the purchase of different sized vehicles to tackle narrow back streets and steep inclines in the city, is now being assessed by crews, call centres and managers, who are working to identify areas where problems persist in a bid to fine-tune the system.

The council spokeswoman said: “This was the biggest reorganisation of our domestic bin collections in over a decade and involved crews emptying around 170,000 bins and bags a week as well as learning new routes and ways of working.

“We expected some teething problems and we have been working hard to solve them although we recognised that we have still more to do.”

She added: “For the first time in many years the Christmas period has had a minimal impact on collections for the majority of the city with normal collections resuming on Monday 5 January. We believe this is as a direct result of the new way of working.”

Middlesbrough

Middlesbrough borough council moved to a four-week collection schedule with the same start of Plymouth and for the same reason of being able to perform more routine vehicle maintenance, however, the council reported that it had not experienced teething problems of the severity seen in Plymouth.

A spokesman for Middlesbrough council told letsrecycle.com: “Our team has had no problems whatsoever. In the first week there were a few minor teething problems but they were sorted out by the second week. They also put it to a vote and the staff all really like having the extra day off.”

The moves by the two councils follows other councils such as Sefton, Warrington, Barnsley, Stroud and Redcar and Cleveland, who have all adopted a four-day week, meaning that collections are performed over longer hours but across fewer days.