A Gedling borough resident has been paid £100 in compensation by his local council after it missed multiple garden waste collections. The man, who has not been named, escalated his complaint to the Ombudsman after Gedling Borough Council missed scheduled collections in 2020 and 2021.
After reviewing the case, the Ombudsman upheld the complaint saying the man, who was labelled 'Mr D', had suffered an injustice from the authority. He had initially complained to the Council in July 2020 in relation to his garden waste bin being missed for collection on two occasions and was told the Covid-19 pandemic had caused disruption, with the council apologising for this.
Mr D was told that a waste supervisor would speak to crews and monitor collection on a weekly basis. However, a second complaint was made in September 2021, with Mr D stating he was having to call or message the council for every alternate collection, and was given different reasons why the bin was not collected.
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These reasons included obstruction of his street which, he felt, was incorrect. Gedling Borough Council apologised for the service disruption and agreed there were no obstructions causing missed collections and that repeated requests for collections should not have to be made, instead suggesting the problem had been with the briefing of collection crews.
A month later, in October last year, a further complaint was made by Mr D, and this was then escalated to the Ombudsman in November 2021.
A report by the council's states: "The Ombudsman did conclude that the council was at fault for missing Mr D’s garden waste collections repeatedly in 2020 and 2021 and that as aresult he had suffered injustice, namely he had incurred unnecessary time and trouble pursuing missed collections.
"The Ombudsman accepted that there had been issues with the service and staffing of the service during this period which resulted in missed collections, but also concluded that the council had given false reasons for failed collections to Mr D and had failed to escalate supervision of the route following several missed collections."
Gedling Borough Council has accepted that the garden waste service was "not satisfactory" and offered a garden waste charges reimbursement to Mr D - additional training was also given to crews. The council had paid and fully refunded the complainant in full prior to the Ombudsman's report being published - these payments were made from the existing budgets in 2021/22.
Through 2020 and 2021, due to Covid-19, the waste collection service had been operating with reduced resource and had utilised staff who were "unfamiliar with collection routes and reporting systems" which led to some missed collections.
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