Bin collection calendars missing

Calendars advising Preston residents of bin collection changes had to be hand delivered by council staff after the company contracted to do the job allegedly missed out addresses in various parts of the city.

The biggest overhaul of Preston City Council’s waste service in almost 15 years takes effect from Monday (20th April) when a new pick-up schedule is introduced.

It means collection days will change for many households – and, for the first time, all dwellings will see their bins emptied on the same day each week. The current fortnightly collection cycle – alternating between general and recyclable rubbish – will continue.

The revamp coincides with the start of weekly food waste collections in the city council patch.

The authority produced area-specific calendars to inform every household when their waste will be picked up under the new arrangements – regardless of whether or not the day was set to change. It was intended that the all-important important information would drop through letterboxes with around a fortnight to go before the new system came into force.

However, a meeting of the full council on Thursday heard how an “unusual” number of comments on one of the authority’s own social media posts had last week alerted town hall chiefs to the fact a significant number of residents had still not received their calendar.

Cabinet member for environment and community safety Freddie Bailey said the firm paid to make the city-wide deliveries – which he did not name – was “adamant” that it had done so.   But further investigation provided an “overwhelming” indication that many of the flyers had not arrived, he explained.

Faced with the need to ensure a “smooth” transition to the new set-up, Cllr Bailey said the authority had reprinted many of the calendars and asked staff “to work overtime…to deliver to large areas across Preston where we think [they] have not been delivered”.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands most households are now believed to have received the document. However, any that remain without it can use the online postcode checker the council set up last month to enable residents to find out how – and whether – their bin days are changing.

Cllr Bailey told the meeting the problem was not one that the authority had expected.

“You pay for a private company…and you…place that trust in them – and they’ve obviously let us down,” he said.

He also reissued a warning to residents, first made via the LDRS last month, that bins must be left out by 7am on their collection day – irrespective of whether that day has changed.

That is because the exact timing of the collections is liable to alter for all households under the new schedule – and so anybody who puts their rubbish out only shortly before their traditional pick-up time risks missing it altogether.

Cllr Bailey said bins should ideally be left out “the night beforehand”.

The biggest change to emptying times will come as a result of the introduction, from Monday, of separate recycling collections – one for each of the two bins provided for recyclable waste.

Until this week, the contents of red-lidded and yellow-lidded green bins – the former containing paper and cardboard and the latter glass, metal and some plastics – were collected in one go by a single vehicle. The new system will see each picked up by a different bin wagon – but still within the same day for each household.