Service change sees Torbay call centre overwhelmed

Torbay council has apologised to residents after confusion over its new recycling collection service lead to its call centre being overwhelmed with an “unprecedented number” of calls.

The council is working with services firm May Gurney following a deal agreed in March (see letsrecycle.com story) under the joint venture Tor2 to deliver kerbside boxes to households in the Devon area which will see the council move from a fortnightly commingled kerbside recycling collection service to a weekly, source-separated service.

The roll-out of the boxes, which will replace the existing 240 litre wheeled bins for dry recyclables, a weekly food waste collection and include a wider range of materials for collection, was stepped up last week with Tor2 intending to supply all properties with new containers by the end of the weekend.

However, last week, the customer contact centre received 1,123 calls from residents calling with regards to the change, with local press, with The Herald Express recounting a host of anecdotal evidence from residents supposedly ‘rebelling' against the system.

The council claimed that, while there were a higher number of calls than expected, they were not all negative and, in a large number of cases concerned information about collection days and what material could be recycled as opposed to criticisms of the new service.

And, this week, in a bid to address the influx of calls, the council has drafted six additional staff into the call centre and said it is currently working through a backlog of inquiries.

A statement released by the council concerning the calls said: “We understand some residents have experienced some difficulties getting through to Torbay council's customers first call centre. Tor2 and Torbay council apologise for this and would like the residents of Torbay to know that work is being done to remedy this.

“As we are sure everyone can appreciate, with an upcoming and major improvement to the recycling and waste collections in Torbay and the extensive coverage this is getting, many residents have questions. Therefore Torbay council's customer first call centre has been receiving an unprecedented number of calls.”

Service

A spokesman for the council told letsrecycle.com said that there had been calls of support for the introduction of the new service – contrary to some reports in the local press.

He said: “It is important to point out that there are a lot of people coming out in support of the system but it is important that we give balance. We want to highlight that we are getting a lot of positive feedback from people who can't wait for the service to be rolled out.”

“The call centre was, last week, receiving a large number of reports but a lot of those are lots of people asking questions which we have answered in the literature and leaflets. A lot of the queries are actually already answered in that information.”

The full roll-out is expected to be completed by September 6, when the first run of the new collections will be carried out. The new box service will cover clothes and shoes, food and drinks cans, plastic bottles, paper and junk mail, aerosols in one box. And, in the second box they will be able to recycle glass bottles and jars, foil and all cardboard.