Ombudsman orders £100 payment after missed collection reporting issues

The decision from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman was handed down in June but published by the body earlier this week.

The complainant, named as Mr B, told the Ombudsman that the council failed to collection his garden waste and sometimes when it was collected, left his bin in the wrong and more inconvenient location. He also said he could not use the online reporting tool as it kept saying he did not present waste for collection.

Mr B says as a result “he suffered the inconvenience of repeatedly contacting the council trying to resolve this matter.”

Dispute

The dispute centred on missed garden waste collections between April 2021 and February 2023. The ruling says Mr B reported the missed collections repeatedly to the council, having first wrote to them about it in December 2021. Bromley’s states it has no record of ever receiving this first email despite Mr B having gotten an email to confirm its receipt.

As the missed collections continued, Mr B complained again to the council in June 2022, stating he wanted a refund or a free collection service for 2023/2024. The Ombudsman adds that Mr B tried to report the missed collection using the online reporting tool but could not do so as the tool had recorded that he failed to present the waste for collection.

The council responded in July 2022 and offered to monitor his collection service with Mr B querying if this was a response to his complaint, the ombudsman explains. The council replied at the end of July 2022 stating it would agree to providing Mr B with a free collection service for the financial year 2023/24.

But in mid-August of the same year Mr B wrote to the council that the missed collections continued and, on a time, when the council had collected Mr B’s garden waste the collection crew left the bin blocking his neighbour’s driveways. This continued into September and October.

The ombudsman stated that after receiving no initial response Mr B had to chase the council. It eventually offered to monitor his waste collections again stating, “the crew collecting the waste were new and unfamiliar with the route and this led to missed collections.”

In January 2023, the Ombudsman found Mr B finally had enough of the continued missed collections and requested a refund from the council of his subscription for the 2022/23 financial year.  The council agreed to this.

Findings

The ombudsman found that both Bromley council and its contractor bear responsibility for the persistent issues Mr. B encountered with the garden waste collection service he subscribed to in April 2021.

It said they both “repeatedly failed to perform collections as scheduled and mishandled the return of Mr. B’s bin and despite being aware of these problems, it neglected to address them effectively, even though readily available measures could have mitigated the issues”.

Moreover, the council’s “poor customer service, including delays in acknowledging and addressing Mr. B’s concerns, as well as a lack of transparency about its complaint handling process, further compounded the issue”.

‘Fair’

The council’s policies on waste collection were deemed “fair” by the Ombudsman, but the fault lied in their implementation. While the council had mechanisms to monitor and address missed collections, its response to Mr. B’s dissatisfaction “raises doubts about the accuracy of its complaint statistics”.

Consequently, the ombudsman said it “appreciated the council’s commitment to taking additional action to rectify the situation, aiming to adequately remedy the injustice suffered by Mr. B”.