A council has promised to make changes to garden waste bin collections following a number of problems over the last year.
Gedling borough councillor Sam Smith (Con), who represents Trent Valley, said some residents have been left “infuriated” by missed collections for garden waste, despite paying a fee every year.
The service runs every year from the start of April to the end of March the following year – with no collections in January and February.
The cost for the 2025/26 service is £45 for one brown bin, and any additional brown bins cost £23 each.
Cllr Smith said he has recieved more complaints than he ever has in all of his seven years as an elected member.
He said he has been receiving around five to six additional complaints every few weeks from the same households.
“I have no complaints with general waste, black waste or green waste, it is garden waste,” he said, speaking during a Gedling Borough Council meeting on Monday (September 29).
“Residents are really infuriated by it because they pay extra for that service.
“We go back to them through the complaints process and say, sorry we missed you this time, we will get it right next week. [Residents] copy me in, the officers, and then we miss it.
“You go round this doom loop of ‘the computer says no’ through the complaints system. There is one resident who [messages] me every week saying he thinks the council is missing him on purpose, because it is that often.
“It is really infuriating and it lets this council down.”
Director of operations, Sarah Troman, said garden waste collections were “at the top of the list” for reorganisation as a result.
“We know it is not sustainable to deliver it with the crews that we have got, with the customer base we have got, so, as soon as we start to slow down – which should be in the next six weeks or so – we are going to look at completely revamping those rounds,” she said.
“There will be a little bit of pain in terms of lots of collections, days might change, but it means when we start again in March we will be in a much stronger position.
“We know there have been lots of consistently missed bins, and the numbers have improved a lot over the last few weeks, but we are now down to the sticky ones.”
Cllr Marje Paling (Lab), portfolio holder for environment services, said problems with wider waste collection have been improving despite a difficult year.
She said the authority has been forced to use more agency workers, with sickness and annual leave having clashed “tremendously over the summer months, compounded by vehicles breakdowns, and team vacancies.”
Figures show there were 467 missed bin collections in June, but this has fallen to just 135 as of September.
Cllr Paling said a new tracking system has been installed in bin lorries to assist with collecting missed bins, while a number of new bin lorries will be rolled out “over the next few weeks” to reduce breakdowns.
Six new drivers and six loaders are being interviewed by the council the week commencing September 29 in a bid to reduce vacancies and reliance on agency staff, who she says may not know the rounds as well as permanent workers.
“I hope that is really going to work for us,” Cllr Paling added.
