‘A press release earlier this week said ‘South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils have taken the difficult decision to activate their business continuity plan and suspend their garden waste collections.’
‘The councils’ bin crews will be prioritising the collection of food waste, recycling and general waste collections following government guidelines in a bid to reduce the disruption to waste collections.’
Not everybody has got the message. These shots along the Oxford Road in Abingdon were this Saturday morning and the collection should have been Thursday.
There was a delay to the collection of recycled and garden waste two weeks ago.
‘The disruption is due to the ongoing issues of a shortage of HGV drivers who are needed to drive the councils’ waste collection vehicles. This is a national issue, not just affecting the districts.’
It could be down to the need to self-isolate.
The council will review the situation towards the end of August before providing an update.
It’s a pity more notice wasn’t given…. many of us have full bins getting less fragrant as the days pass!
How could they give notice when it was thrust upon them with virtually no warning – a Monday morning and half their drivers just didn’t come in.
Just put the garden waste in the grey bin.
That’s where it went before we had brown bins, unless you had a compost heap. A bit of a shame when it could be put to better use, but if needs must…
I’m getting the feeling that ‘HGV driver shortage innit’ is going to become the go to excuse for a lot of poor service in future. Ask the drivers though and it’s not just the money but the conditions and the hours that are causing people with other options to take them. Oh, and dont mention DCPC unless you have an hour or two to fill.
Brexit reality
Really? I hope so!! Although I’m still waiting for the promised “property price crash”… (How else will I buy a couple of ‘buy to lets’)?
Do you know quite how soon it is before the crash actually happens though? I’ve been waiting since June 2016, when it was originally said to happen…
Pretty poor customer service from the council here. I understand they cant do much about the issue with staffing, at least in the short term, but a press release isnt really an acceptable way of advising customers who pay directly for a service that the provider is unable to deliver,
They have all our email and physical addresses and the least they could do is to contact us directly, rather that leaving us to find out when the bins dont get collected.
Response from the Council when asked why people weren’t emailed – ‘There is no system for emailing customers in place. Customer services for the bin collections was outsourced a number of years ago as part of the 5 Councils Partnership and did not include a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to save money. The 5 Councils Partnership proved to give worse services with minimal or no saving on money; the incoming administration started to insource services to overcome this. Customer Services were insourced on 1 April this year and it was noted that that email addresses (together with other info) were full of errors. Recovering that and implementing a CRM does take time but is under way.’
Insourced, outsourced – where do people learn to write this stuff?
We are fortunate to have collections of our household waste, Imagine having to dispose of it all ourselves.
Presume the Council will offer us a small rebate on their charge for this service.
Apparently not. Something to do with the payment only being for 20 collections a year.
Exactly. People need to read their agreement.
They will if they fail to provide the 20 collections they are contracted to.