Hi, I’ve phoned Ealing Council about 20 times since April to report missed collections and have had 4 letters acknowledging my complaints but nothing improves. About 25% of the time all the recycling and black bag rubbish goes on the right day. About 50% of the time, one or two categories (varies which ones) are not picked up; when I report it to the call centre the next day, whatever didn’t get collected is then collected. About 25% of the time, two categories are missed and the recollection only picks up one of the missed categories and the other one stays till I ring again or the next collection day.
I spoke to one of the recollection gang today and they said it was because the new contractors, Enterprise, had reduced the number of waste vehicles available by 16, and increased the size of the remaining ones – and this means they can’t get round some of the street corners.
Thinks: if that’s the case, why don’t the operatives move the rubbish up to the nearest accessible street corner and collect from there?
The recollecters said that they had hundreds of tasks on their log-sheets – and they think it’s more expensive to recollect than collect correctly the first time.
I asked the call centre at Ealing council how I can escalate my complaint but have heard nothing yet (only rang yesterday).
Is anyone else having problems?
Gill
Yes, almost every week! We leave our rubbish on the street back of the Panasonic shop. We were putting it there all the time and when the enterprise took over they put sign that dumping the rubbish is illegal etc. We spoke to council and they said its fine to leave it there but still we have so many missed collections. Sometimes it looks really filthy when the bags are there for few days, but we live in flats and there is no place to keep it. Is that the service we pay for?
Update: they collected fine today – which is the correct revised date for the holidays. The landfill truck backed successfully down my road and took the black bag; the rest was taken all together in a small high sided truck, They said they’d been instructed to do this as the main truck can’t come down.
I am actually fairly satisfied with my black bag collections. It’s the green box people who I have had issues with. For example, if my neighbor leaves the wrong stuff in their box (and sometimes it’s passers-by throwing fast food wrappers etc into it) as the box collectors rarely check the numbers painted onto the boxes, they then throw the neighbors half empty box into my front garden spilling all the rubbish out of it over my path as a way of expressing annoyance with the person who put the wrong stuff in.
Rubbish collection on Westfield Road seems ok also. Except for the fact that street signs and lamp posts at the Northern end of the road seem to like being bent like pipe cleaners on the same mornings as rubbish collection!
I take it back. They were a day late and left my Christmas tree, I should not have tempted fate!
They took everything – on the correct (revised) day – hallelujah! Is it due to the power of this blog? Didn’t take my xmas tree, either, though – they have got till 18th January, however, see here: http://www.ealing.gov.uk/news/article/562/christmas_tree_recycling . Was your tree over 6ft high, Nick?
They didn’t take my Xmas tree and I was conscious that time was running out. In the end I saw an Enterprise van parking near my house so I ran out to ask them if they could collect my tree as I could see they had quite a few in the back of the van. They told me they were only collecting items left on the pavement i.e. dumped!! As they parked only a few doors away I did manage to persuade them in the end to collect take my tree. So the upshot is if I had dragged my tree round the corenr then contacted the council to say it had been dumped I would have got it collected far easier than I actually did! CRAZY.
Interesting, Diane. Would have been nice if they’d told us to start fly-tipping our trees!
I gave up waiting and enlisted the help of my sister to lug the tree through the ice and snow to Elthorne Park where a pile had already gathered – let’s hope they’ve picked them up.
On a positive note, I’ve had no trouble with collections now for the last two weeks, which may be due to the fact that I asked to escalate my complaint as complaint level 1 just generated letters apologising and saying they were having stern words. Presumably Level 2 and sterner words did the trick. I feel as though we are being turned into a nation of complainers because nothing gets done otherwise – can’t be right, surely?