'Lessons will be learned' admit West Lothian Council over Christmas bin uplifts

dailyrecord.co.uk:

West Lothian Council has assured householders that “lessons will be learned” after bin uplifts over the Christmas holidays were hit with a perfect storm of bad weather, staff shortages and increased waste tonnage.Head of Operational Services Jim Jack took the unusual step of addressing the Linlithgow Local Area Committee after a service breakdown during the Christmas holidays left 15,000 bins, mainly in the ward area not collected for two weeks.And he promised new action plans were being drawn up to ensure there would be no problems in the upcoming bank holidays over Easter and for the King’s coronation in early May.In a report to the committee Mr Jack, the officer in charge of waste management, said that customers had been advised ahead of the Christmas holidays that there would be no brown bin uplifts between 25 December and 4 January.

Brown bins are for garden and food waste.Collections of grey bins for non recyclable and blue and green for recyclables were scheduled for uplift on the Wednesday to take account of bank holidays.Mr Jack added: “The council was unable to provide full service collection between 28 and 30 December 2022 due to a number of issues.“The disruption occurred over two days affecting eight routes on each day, and was therefore localised in its impact.

It is estimated that 15,700 bins (16%) of the 100,000 bins scheduled for collection that week were not collected.”The disruption was fixed by the first week of January or else it would have stretched the calendar of missed up lifts to a month.Five major issues have been identified behind the failings.

Staff sickness, vehicles, increased tonnage of waste, problems with waste transfer and poor communications.Mr Jack’s report outlined solutions being