LARGE families who might struggle with South Gloucestershire’s move to three-weekly black bin collections can apply for a second wheelie bin, council leaders say.
The reduction from fortnightly black bin days is being accompanied by the rollout of new reusable white recycling bags for plastic, cans and foil, and a roll of small blue bags for soft plastic, following a successful trial, along with a nappy and hygiene waste collection.
Council leaders have admitted making mistakes during the transition to a new waste service, under a new contract that started seven months ago.
At a council scrutiny commission last week Paul Hughes (Con, Bitton & Oldland Common) asked if the authority had “modelled the impact on vulnerable residents and larger households” of the change to three-weekly black bin collections for non-recyclable rubbish.
Cabinet member for communities Sean Rhodes (Lab, Kingswood) said: “Any household that is struggling to manage with the move to three-weekly, even once they’ve taken on the recycling, there is the capacity for applying for an additional black bin.
“They will be assessed on that, and as long as all of the appropriate levels of recycling and sorting are happening, the option of getting an additional black bin is available to people, as long as they apply through the website.”
As part of the new £120 million, eight-year waste contract, the council has taken over waste transfer stations and Sort It household waste recycling centres.
Kerbside collections continue to be outsourced to Suez, which held the previous long-term private finance initiative deal.
The new contract has seen more than 50 Suez staff transferred to the council and more than half of all bin lorries replaced.
Cllr Rhodes told the meeting: “I genuinely cannot overstate the amount of work that has gone into delivering transformational change to a service which connects to almost every single one of our residents.
“To deliver this amount of change in such a short space of time is quite frankly remarkable, and we should all be very grateful to our officers.”
A report to the scrutiny commission said not everyone was aware their bin day had changed when the new contract started last August, despite the authority sending two separate leaflets to every household, as well as social media posts, adverts, and information in One Stop Shops and libraries.
Cllr Hughes asked: “Do you think you could have done more on this to obtain a better result?”
Cllr Rhodes said: “The ideal way of doing it would be 1-2-1 to every household and knock on every single door to let people know, but obviously that’s not going to happen.
“The simple answer to your question is yes, there are always lessons we can learn to get our comms better.
“We want to do more. Anyone who doesn’t get the information we put out is to some extent a failing, but we acknowledge that, and there are lessons we have learned in terms of how we make contact with people.
“Overall a good job was done in terms of getting that information out.
“A considerable change happened.
“Could we have done more? Always, we could do more, absolutely.”
Replying to a question by Brenda Langley (Con, Hanham) about collection delays on New Year’s Eve, Cllr Rhodes said: “There were issues over the Christmas period.
“Part of that was due to an unexpected rise in the amount of cardboard we collected – it was unprecedented.
“Maybe we should have had a better handle on that, but it was at a level that we genuinely didn’t expect.”
He said high levels of staff sickness, combined with the big rise in cardboard from home deliveries, meant extra rounds could not be made.
Cllr Rhodes said: “Perhaps we should have done a better job of explaining that.”
By Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service