Swindon council gives update on when bin collections will be normal

The council's new waste collection system, which officially launched in November 2023, saw hundreds of Swindon residents with uncollected bins over Christmas as refuge and rats piled up.

As of Thursday, January 25, 13,336 households' recycling was still uncollected, and cabinet member for transport and environment, Cllr Chris Watts, has admitted: "The deficiencies are in all areas of the recycling system.

"Other councils have done it successfully because they had upfront project management whereas we seem to have tried to do it on the cheap and now we are paying for that."

Currently, recycling collections are running two days behind schedule, and the decision has been taken to hire more vehicles and staff to get collections back to normal.

Overflowing bins was a particular issue over Christmas. (Image: Dave Cox)

"I have met with the chief executive and the leader of the council and we have agreed to put in more resources to try to get the backlog down," said Cllr Watts.

"These are unsustainable and expensive temporary resources just to try and get over the hump we have seen.

"With the new vehicles we have coming in we should see a considerable improvement in the next two weeks and certainly hope to catch up by mid-February."

According to the councillor, failures of the new system are due to several factors including lack of proper project management, lack of funding within the council, and an increase in cardboard over Christmas.

Councillor Chris Watts has spent the last month at the recycling centre addressing issues with the new system. (Image: Newsquest)

"It is a very linear queueing system that has proved to be inefficient," said Cllr Watts.

"We are going to conduct an independent review to determine what the initial issues were and to help address systemic issues.

"In my opinion, not enough project management was put in place and so we are now trying to do everything backwards.

"The blue bag system has proved unpopular and is something we will also review but not until we get to a point where we have solved the systemic issue that we are seeing at the moment," he added.

With additional collection trucks and resources on the way, residents have been asked to keep their recycling out if it is not collected on time, as bin collectors are also working on weekends to clear the backlog.

"I want to thank the residents and we will be doing our very best to make sure we get this system back on track," said Coun Watts.

"I would also like to thank the workers for the way they have applied themselves tirelessly over the last month."