Waste management firm Cory Environmental has apologised to residents in Cornwall for missing waste collections from thousands of homes across the county.
Problems began after Cory took over the local authoritys waste collection contract on April 2.
In a statement released last week, Cornwall council said that the problems were unacceptable after residents had complained that they had waited up to four weeks for their waste to be collected.
Cory was awarded an eight-year contract worth 125 million to collect waste and carry out street cleansing for Cornwall county council after being named preferred bidder in November 2011 (see letsrecycle.com story).
The company replaced the eight contractors previously responsible for waste collections across Cornwalls six districts, as the council wanted to introduce a standardised collection service across the county. Under the deal, Cory is scheduled to carry out weekly black bag collections of residual waste, as well as a fortnightly collections of dry recyclables and garden waste.
But, the new service has been dogged by problems since its introduction at the start of the month, and the council has been forced to hire extra staff to answer telephones after receiving more than 38,000 phone calls to its waste and recycling line in the space of two weeks.
Issues
The council also said that it had received reports from 7,000 residents that their bins had not been collected on time. A number of residents have also complained that they did not receive new recycling containers that were due to be used under the new collection service.
According to Cory, collections have been missed as some of the vehicles were too big to gain access to properties along narrow lanes, but the company says it has been working hard to resolve these issues.
Councillor Julian German, Cornwall county councils portfolio holder for the environment, said: This has been a massive change affecting every single household in Cornwall. While we had anticipated that there would be some initial teething problems, it is clear that the implementation of the new contract in some parts of Cornwall has not been satisfactory and we are taking this up with the contractor so that problems are resolved quickly.
However, while there are undoubtedly problems in some areas, the latest figures show Cory have successfully completed over 1.3 million collections of refuse, recycling, garden waste and clinical waste over the last three weeks this equates to 98.5% of the scheduled number of collections.”
Apology
Nigel Carr, general manager for Cory Environmental, has apologised for the problem and said that the company was working to resolve the issues. He said: “We apologise to any resident who has had a missed collection or experienced disruption to the service during this major change. We have brought in additional vehicles and staff to help deal with missed collections and deliver the remaining recycling containers.”
Register for free to comment