Hopes that the bin collection chaos across the isle would be discussed at a Thanet council meeting on Thursday (June 18) were dashed when a motion on the issue was voted down.
The motion, put forward by Cllr George Kup (Con) and backed by Green and Reform members, was submitted in response to growing concerns from residents about missed collections, overflowing bins, and wider service disruption across Thanet.
The motion asked Full Council to urgently refer the matter to the Overview and Scrutiny Panel for a detailed examination of waste services across the district.
This included consideration of:
* current service performance and operational pressures;
* staffing and resource capacity;
* recurring service issues and disruption;
* actions already being taken to improve performance;
* options to strengthen service delivery;
* development of a clear service improvement plan;
* opportunities for greater engagement with Ward Councillors and Town and Parish Councils;
* and opportunities for wider partnership working across the district to support long-term improvements.
Cllr Kup told the meeting: “Every single ward across the district has had issues with bin collections. We have lost some of the trust from our residents in delivering what they believe is a simple service. We need to make sure we can rebuild that trust by showing we are listening and showing we are taking action on this.”
But, council leader Rick Everitt said the matter had already been raised at the scrutiny panel earlier in the week with agreement to schedule a meeting to receive a report from officers to examine the issues the service has been facing.
He said: “There have been significant problems with some household waste collections since the implementation in April of Simpler Recycling. The changes result from decisions made by the previous government which were mandatory and not a matter of choice for us.
We knew these would pose challenges as the 27,000 properties affected in Thanet are by definition the hardest to collect from.
“Importantly, every household should still be getting a weekly collection, a minimum of food waste and of either recycling or residual waste.
“We knew the transition would not be smooth. In the event Simpler Recycling issues have manifested in various ways, but they have also combined with exiting pressures in the operational service to cause wider problems.
“One reason, but by no means the only one, is that within the Simpler Recycling rounds there is a currently an imbalance in the amount of residual waste being presented in those weeks in the properties that have a new recycling service. We expect that to level off over time.”
He added that there has been a significant increase in recycling but said the council has to make sure that what is being asked of waste collection loaders and drivers is “still reasonable within the context of a rising number of residential properties” and that the service is operating as efficiently as possible.
He said this is now the subject of a review, adding: “Residents have every right to expect us to be providing the service we have promised on the day we say we will provide it and I am sorry that has not been happening efficiently in all areas and I am grateful for the patience and tolerance shown by residents affected, but restoring that reliability is an immediate priority.”
He added that there have been improvements but “there is more to do.”
But, he said officers were already focused on doing everything to improve the situation and councillors could not ‘manage the operational service’ and must not ‘seek to reorganise the service ourselves.’
Cllr Everitt said the motion requested a special scrutiny meeting to hear a detailed explanation of the situation and the plan to address it but, he added, it did not need to come to full council for that request and that it had already been requested by Cllr Joanne Bright at the scrutiny meeting two days earlier with the chairman agreeing to facilitate it.
He said officers could present a report at scrutiny whereas they could not speak at a full council meeting.
A vote on the motion at the full council meeting was lost with members of the Labour administration voting it down due to it being scheduled for Overview and Scrutiny – although there was disagreement over whether this had happened.
Following the meeting, Cllr Kup said: “I am saddened and frustrated that Labour chose not to debate the motion at the Full Council Meeting. This meant councillors from across the chamber could not voice their concerns, and more importantly, their residents concerns about the ongoing waste collection situation across the district.
“I stood and said in the chamber that this was not party political and this should have seen all the council come together by voting for the motion, but that has simply not happened.
“The process should have been for this motion to be heard, debated and agreed upon for the chair of the Overview and Scrutiny to call an extraordinary meeting – as the motion stated.
“However, I am encouraged to learn that the Chair of O&S will be calling an extraordinary meeting despite the proper process not being followed. I hope that at this meeting we can finally show to residents we are listening, we know and can learn from what’s happened and that we are taking action to resolve this district wide issue of waste collection.”
Thanet Greens leader Tricia Austin said her members were also disappointed not to have been able to discuss the collection problems.
She said the decision instead had been to “kick the can down the road to be considered only by the 13 members of the council’s Scrutiny Panel at a later date.”
The Green group says they believe this denies residents the chance to hear their representatives discuss ways to address the chaos the isle has been engulfed in over recent weeks.
The group added that the argument that officers could not speak at Full Council was “disingenuous” and that councillors could have presented: “practical suggestions to address issues.”
Group Leader Cllr Austin said: “As a group with the environment and climate change at the heart of our mission, we are deeply concerned that some residents have lost confidence in recycling and separating food waste during this period.
“We are encouraged that our recycling rate has gone up – but what we see on social media is residents advising each other to abandon all attempts to recycle and put everything into black bags. This will inevitably lead to some of those bags ending up in street bins – the exact reverse of what we were hoping for.
“This was a chance to make recycling genuinely simple and easy for people in Thanet, but we have mishandled it. In our view, while officers sort out the backlog and address the gaps in service, as a council we need to provide an apology to residents; a straightforward explanation of the new system and an easy-to-use (and functional) webpage and a helpline for residents who are not online.
“This Group’s councillors, along with most across the council, stand ready to help in any way we can, so we can speedily return our service to the levels residents have a right to expect and start to win back their trust.”
More boots on the ground. Bad form from the Labour Group to vote this down.
Less than 12 months to get this poorly Labour led Council out, in Labour we do not trust with counting beans, let alone get the bins collected and emptied.
And here you have it. Thanet Council Labour Party in a nutshell. The political leadership of these services has utterly failed so full Council is the right place to debate it.
It’s such a shame TDC don’t put as much effort into sweeping the streets as they do sweeping problems under the carpet.
Where’s Councillor Albon in all of this ? These are his services that he receives a generous allowance for having political control of.
Absolute shambles all round. Well done George and Tricia for keeping the pressure on.
Strangely here in Broadstairs on Thursday we had both our recycling and food waste collected on the correct day and at 7am ! First time since the mixed recycling started !
You should all be ashamed of yourselves.No wonder people are giving up on voting.Is there any point.The word useless springs to mind.Just spent a week in the Cotswolds and a week in Surrey working.They seem to be able to pick up litter and empty a bin.Why am I paying the same Council tax as these areas and getting so much less.
I look forward to a full report on who will be sacked over this.
No chance. Let’s not forget the Portfolio Holder Albon was a Union Rep at TDC before he became a Councillor. His job was to protect staff from disciplinary action and get them off the hook for things like this.
There’s absolutely no way he’ll be holding anyone to account for this complete service failure.
I asked Helen Whitehead this, and she blamed the previous Tory government! TDC are beyond satire.
On the continent (and I believe parts of Liverpool and Manchester) they use underground communal bins. These are huge and are emptied quickly when they automatically report that they are getting full. How about using some of the town grants to implement that here?
Cliff T I think that you are referring to the Envac system (or similar), they have this in parts of Copenhagen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaP4sUNZdeA
Cliff T – sorry post script…I think that a better start would be the deposit return scheme. When I lived in CPH,there were a few Danish Kroners for each bottle or can. My daughter Toma (who was seven) used to tell me off if I threw a can out.When there were lots of cans I told her that mummy had been drinking them )). It is a great scheme as it involves children to be involved in recycling from an early age …..even if Toma would get here voucher money and run across the shopping centre and spend it on toys and sweets)))
I hadn’t seen the EnVac system – but that looks neat. I was thinking of the low tech – big underground bins where the dustcart lifts the whole thing out of the ground to empty it.
What gets me is all the lies! Our block has a secured container, and we make sure that the area is open on collection days. Low and behold, not emptied on the day. On the councils web page they say “could not be collected, was still locked up”! Lies, lies, lies!!! Tried Emailing the council, get an automated response, no answers why at all! Is there no one at the council who can plan something correctly? Also, we love at the end of Cavendish Street in Ramsgate, and most days the bin lorries are parked up here so the Guys can have a coffee break (absolutely nothing against that) so logistically they are in our area. Couldn’t they just grab the finish then? I feel sorry for the bin guys, it’s not their fault, it’s the fools on top who couldn’t arrange a funeral in a grave yard!
We have not had our bins collected in four weeks now, in this heat its getting putrid.
Heads in the sand me thinks. Now if it was about trying to stop planes
from flying at Manston Airport, that’s a different matter.
as well as blaming the Tory ex-government, Whitehead claims there are problems everywhere. Anything to stop her cronies from losing their jobs I s’pose!
And I found it very interesting that there was loads of Full Council agenda time to debate Whitehead’s City of Sanctuary idea last year but the same full Council won’t debate the huge waste and recycling issues across the isle.
Labour priorities in action !!
They’re worse than useless!
And of course has nothing to do with her and tdc’s fixation on social housing, diverting every penny they can and no doubt other tdc resources and then took another 1 plus million out of the budget to increase the amount of council tax support.
Having no faith whatsoever in the ability of this administration to do sensible budgeting it’s not unreasonable to expect some financial issues in the not so distant future.
The transfer of land at hackie bakers to housing department just another bit of chicanery
Actually John, TDC is studiously neutral about Manston under Rick, and Polly is super slopey shouldered about it too. Its RTC that are quite rightly concerned about monstrous levels of noise over Ramsgate for some allegedly critical cargo shortages of freeze dried fish. Ask RSP.
On bins, Rick seems to blame the residents. Or a previous government for insisting all public services step up to the plate on recycling, rather than labelling huge swathes of local houses “difficult to collect from”. The lack of competence and accountability is staggering. Just like spaffing millions of the LUF on the dead duck ferry. But I fear competence under a unitary will be little better.
We need new thinking. New leadership. New ideas. New pride in public service.
COME TO THE BACK OFF MILLMEAD ROAD-UTTER TIP.
There are problems all over Thanet… yet it’s not deemed important enough to discuss or discipline staff!
I am giving up commenrting due to Kathy constantly censoring me!
Bye.
I think its because I was born homophobic.
No-one is born homophobic, no more than anyone is born racist. But if I ever meet you, I’ll give you a great big kiss! 💋
Are people born homosexual then Peter? I didn’t know that, can it be caught like measles, if so perhaps there may be a cure one day.
I don’t know and don’t care, but I’m sure many would fancy you, Big Boy! 🫂
How’s the giving up commenting going?
Literally a Tory policy and as usual people don’t want to believe facts.
Was always going to cause disasters in collections and TDC won’t be the only council having massive issues but we are in an era that facts get in the way.
It’s all in the article it doesn’t need to be discussed and shouted about when it’s already in the process of being looked at and we should wait for that before discussing how to move forward.
They politicised it and it worked as it’s worked people into a frenzy.
Be nice when we can get all adults that want to make Thanet a better place and not just play party politics involved in the council tbh
Why implement policies of the previous government and then complain about them. No, TDC have messed up (literally), and deserve to be held to account… except they don’t even want to discuss with cllrs from other parties.