Residents were left with bins uncollected and rubbish strewn over their pavements after waste crews muddled the collection days on one street.

Some of the council’s brand new blue weighted bags were left uncollected on one road in Moredon last Friday (December 1) after crews did not realise that houses on the two sides of the street had different collection days.

There are two post codes on Elborough Road, meaning one side has collections every Wednesday, alternating between waste and recycling, and the other having pick-ups on Wednesday one week and Friday the next.

But last week, crews failed to pick up blue bags full of recycling that residents had placed out ready for the first collection of the new scheme, leaving residents surprised when they saw the brand new sacks full to the brim.

The local authority has spent £600,000 on food waste caddies and weighted bags, and a further £7m on new recycling lorries, with the vast majority of houses seeing their bins collected as expected.

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One resident, Helen Roache, told the Adver: "What's in a letter?

"I know it's still early days but they were testing this out before and thought they were good to go and spent a fortune on these new bags, so how has this happened?

"I filed a complaint and the form said the street had been completed, I don't think they realised two different postcodes and bin collections are on the same road."

The new food waste collections will remove many tonnes of waste from landfill, where the council pays a tax of up to £102 per tonne.

The local authority has spent £600,000 on food waste caddies and weighted bags, and a further £7m on new recycling lorries.

By Wednesday afternoon, the bins and bags on the missed side of Elborough Road had been emptied.

Cllr Chris Watts, the council’s cabinet member with responsibility for the new waste collections, said: “This is the biggest change in our waste and recycling service for 15 years. We’ve had to change a large proportion of our routes and, with around 20,000 collections per day, there will inevitably be some small pockets of Swindon that experience some disruption.

“Residents have so far been incredibly patient if we have inadvertently failed to collect their waste on the new collection day and we encourage them to continue to bear with us while we iron out any problems.

“Some of the properties on this particular street had blue bag collections instead of wheelie bins and we will now go away and see if we can improve this service for local residents. If we do make changes we will write to any affected residents to let them know.

“In the meantime, we would encourage residents to report any missed collections on our website and we will arrange for the waste to be picked up.”