'Weak excuses' lambasted for skipped bin collections on road

Several households in a Maidenhead street have questioned repeated missed bin collections – with one resident hitting out at ‘weak excuses’ for the problem.

Households on Norden Road are finding the different types of bins are not being collected when scheduled.

Danesh Gangahar lives in the cul-de-sac end of the street and noticed that their blue recycling bin wasn’t collected on December 5 – and not for the first time.

Moreover, neighbours also faced problems with the black general waste bin not being collected that day, and a green garden waste bin that wasn’t collected on December 12.

Danesh says at least four neighbouring households on the same stretch of road are affected.

One of them, Imran Latif, said the behaviour of the refuse collectors has left him ‘puzzled.’ His Ring doorbell camera captured one of the instances of skipped blue bin collections.

“You can clearly see them just walk past my bin, which was out there on the pavement like everyone else’s.”

Danesh said he and his neighbours are well-aware of their collection days and are diligently putting their bins out the night before – but whether it will be collected is ‘very much a lottery.’

“Sometimes they collect, sometimes they don’t,” he said. “It’s becoming a habit now, not a one-off mistake. I don’t know why they are not picking up the bins.”

Moreover, recorded reasons for missed bin collections don’t match what residents are seeing with their own two eyes, he said.

In the most recent non-collection affecting Danesh, the reason given was because there was food in the recycling bin.

But, he said, he and his wife checked, and found none. He took a picture and asked the council but did not initially receive a response.

Then, at the next collection, the same bin was accepted, even though its contents were the same as it had been before.

“Surprise, surprise, they didn’t find any food item,” said Danesh.

He feels this shows that RBWM’s bin collectors are producing ‘arbitrary, weak excuses’ for not picking up the bins.

“They told my next-door neighbour that there was too much rubbish, and it wasn’t even half [full],” he said.

Imran’s experience echoes this – when his blue bin was skipped, he said, refuse collectors did not look inside or leave a tag on it to explain why it wasn’t collected.

There are further frustrations with customer services.

“On a previous occasion, they told me that I did not put my bin outside [when I had],” Danesh said.

More to the point, RBWM is ‘not addressing the question’ residents are asking, he added.

“Customer services keep saying they will collect the bin next week, but that avoids the real issue of why bins are being missed.”

Since the general waste bin is now collected every fortnight, a missed bin can cause additional problems – there is a mouse problem in the area, Danesh says.

A spokesperson for RBWM said: “We have been in contact with residents and our contractors to answer concerns around waste collection. Our crews are trained to follow strict contamination guidance – and recognise that this can be frustrating for residents where there is disagreement about contamination.

“We continue to encourage residents to contact us if they believe a bin has been wrongly rejected or missed, so we can investigate and work to resolve this and help to create a cleaner, greener, safer borough.”