About 1,500 Kent bins uncollected each week, data reveals

About 1,500 bins are uncollected each week across Kent.

The county's residents' waste has gone uncollected more than 155,000 times over the last two years, according to data obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

Tonbridge and Malling and the Canterbury district are responsible for about two-fifths of cases since 2021.

While Canterbury's service ranks among the worst in recent years, city council bosses believe the "future is bright".

Council leader Ben Fitter-Harding said the authority's decision in February 2021 to replace waste collection firm Serco with in-house company Canenco was bearing fruit.

"What Canenco inherited was, quite frankly, a joke, and made me wish we'd been able to sever the contract years before," he said.

Mr Fitter-Harding said Canenco was forced to play "catch up before it had even found its feet".

The data shows that Canenco has cut the number of missed collections to fewer than 10,000 in the last 12 months.

In the two years before Serco was replaced, more than 40,000 bins were reported uncollected.

Councillor Mike Sole said he received calls from "whole streets" of frustrated residents every bin collection day while Serco was in charge.

But now, he receives just one complaint a month.

"There's been too much privatisation and effectively you lose control. It leaves you paying someone else's profits when that money could be retained for council services," he said.

Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, which outsources collections to private company Urbaser, has received the highest number of missed bin complaints in the county since 2021. Its numbers increased over the period from 14,954 to 18,592.

Council officials attribute some of the contractor's recent issues to "struggling to recruit HGV drivers" after the Covid outbreak and the recent cold snap.

"The figures include all reports of missed collections, regardless of whether the collection crew actually missed it," a council spokesman added.

"Included in them are missed collection reports made on normal collection days, but where collections may have taken place later than normal for some reason.

"Our waste crews make about six million bin collections every year, and our most recent figures show that missed bins account for 0.4% of the total."

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