Swindon has made the headlines this week and for all the wrong reasons.
According to the hapless Labour Group who run Swindon Borough Council, the collection rate for waste & recycling is 99%. Talk about living on another planet. My inbox, Robert Buckland MP’s inbox and social media has been flooded with complaints & photos of missed waste sitting on the streets for weeks. Over Christmas, people visiting the cemetery were met with grotesque scenes of overflowing bins which were attracting vermin. What a mess.
Of course we understand that operational issues happen, we get bad weather, vehicles breakdown etc. But this isn’t a new problem. This has been a problem since last summer, where we saw over 10,000 missed collections in one single day. Missed collections and delays have been a common occurrence for months.
Any attempts to hold the Labour Councillors to account were dismissed at an emergency Scrutiny meeting, as they simply downplayed the problems. There should have been a comprehensive review and an urgent plan implemented at this stage. It is also worth highlighting that this started under the old waste collection system.
When the new system was introduced on November 1st, the problem seemed to get even worse. Understandably, there was always going to be teething issues, as with any new system. Yet the images over the last few months have really been totally unacceptable, and now the national media has picked up on it. Yet despite all this, despite piles & piles of rubbish on show, the Labour Council show no willing to get a grip, either because they have neither the expertise or time to focus on this issue.
Issues have been compounded further with the bad weather meaning missed collections are being blown away, with residents losing blue bags, food bins and recycling boxes. This has led to horrendous amounts of litter, creating a health-risk and understandably residents vowing to abandon recycling, which is both bad for the environment and will ultimately drive-up costs for the Council with increased landfill charges.
Rather than focusing on fixing the mess they have made, the Labour Council have desperately sought to blame anybody but themselves, including the Government. This is nonsense. Other local authority areas are implementing similar systems without such issues, plus the budget for waste and recycling hasn’t been reduced.
For the festive period only, I do have sympathy with Cllr Chris Watts on the point that there has been an exponential rise in the quantity of cardboard. Over Christmas, this has caused capacity issues for the crews and vehicles. Nationally there is a case for online shops taking a greater responsibility for the costs of collecting and recycling. I will feed this fair point in.
Collectively the Labour Councillors need to come out of hiding and focus on getting this sorted urgently. If they don’t have the expertise, work with the Councillors who do. This is an operational failing which could and should have been fixed months ago.
They need to be honest with the public, urgently set out a clear plan to get the service back on track, utilise additional mop up crews to catch up the missed collections and significantly improve communications to promote and explain the new service. This is what we will all continue to push for. Cllr Chris Watts is the most able Labour Councillor to sort this.
We all want to see high levels of recycling, we will all do our part, we just need it collected!
