Residents have been complaining about the breakdown in collections since Christmas, when the council's vehicles started missing parts of their rounds.
Stirling spokesman Don Monteith admitted some collection routes had been missed this week because up to 12 of the 19-strong vehicle fleet had been taken out of action for servicing. He said: “There are 200-300 bins still outstanding to be collected which have been missed on their collection days.”
The council alternates weekly collections of residual waste with garden waste and cardboard, meaning households could go without a refuse collection for a month if collections are missed.
Blamed
The council blamed its failure on an ageing fleet of vehicles and refuse collection crews who refused to volunteer for overtime. “Most of the vehicle fleet, which is six years old and nearing the end of its life, is increasingly unreliable,” it said. “This has been compounded by the fact that some of the refuse collection crews in the Stirling area are not making themselves available for overtime.”
Mr Monteith said the council was due to replace its vehicles in November 2004, but he denied the council could have anticipated the problem. He said: “That's an issue for management – there are management issues in the way the service is operating and the council will be looking at that.”
Cost
The council has been forced to pay an agency for five extra crews and vehicles to work on reducing the collection backlog. But Mr Monteith said the cost of this extra measure was not yet known and warned: “The age of the fleet means this could happen again over the next 10 months.”
Households in Stirling also have weekly kerbside collections of paper, glass, textiles and plastic bottles. These are collected by a separate council-run team and have been unaffected.
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