‘Council not answering residents’ complaints of unemptied bins’

A Welsh council has continued to leave complaints about unemptied bins unanswered with residents waiting eight weeks for their rubbish to be collected, a concerned councillor has said.

Speaking at a communities scrutiny committee meeting at Ruthin County Hall HQ this week, Cllr Brian Jones slammed the authority, claiming residents were not getting answers to their complaints.

Despite attempts from chairwoman Cllr Karen Edwards, Cllr Jones refused to be silenced on the matter.

The Rhyl Conservative councillor said he had complaints from residents waiting two months for their rubbish to be collected.

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Unaddressed

Cllr Jones then claimed he had escalated the matter with Denbighshire Council’s most senior staff, only for the complaint to remain unaddressed.

“Poor communication from the service to residents and members was mentioned on separate occasions throughout the discussion,” said Cllr Jones, referring to a previous council meeting.

“Officers gave reassurances going forward that the service was committed to improving communications.

“As we’ve got the gentleman (corporate director) here this morning, you might say I should have brought this up offline, but I want to bring it up now.

“I had a communication from a resident on Sunday.

“They’ve been waiting for eight weeks to resolve an issue (have their bin emptied), and I’ve been involved in it.

“I’ve reported it in through the proper channels, customers services. I ended up (reporting it to) head of service, operations manager.”

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Escalated 

He added: “But the issue supposedly hasn’t been resolved, and what I’m bringing up here is on Sunday – it’s got to be said because it’s relevant, because there are things happening all over the county still – so on Sunday, I escalated it up to the chief executive, the corporate director, the head of service, and here we are now Thursday morning, and I haven’t received a response from anybody, so that is bad communication.”

Speaking at the meeting, Denbighshire Council’s corporate director Tony Ward said he would deal with the matter “offline”.

The controversy follows Denbighshire’s botched launch of its new ‘Trolibocs’ scheme, and recent reports that the recycling department is over £2m overspent.