Driver shortage sees Greenwich recycling bin collection go fortnightly
Greenwich Council have announced that from today collection of blue top bins will be every two weeks for most due to driver shortages.
The council recently announced plans to switch to fortnightly collections of black bins from next year.
The latest move is separate from that long standing plan which has been on the board for some years. Today’s move is more of an emergency measure.
For now black bin collections should remain weekly.
They have failed to say whether recycling which was due to be taken today will still be or not followed by next collection in 2 weeks, or whether we now have to wait another 2 weeks which will be 3 weeks in total! Their communication once again is lacking detail. Panic measures. No black sacks collected here either today so we are going to have foxes in their element tonight and waste strewn everywhere. We had no info about failure to collect black sacks today either! So everyone has put them out. Possible if they work late they could still come but its now 8.00pm. What a sorry mess, and social media picking up on it too.
Residents have a right to be given notice if collection days are to be changed. This week’s recycling bins need to be collected. This is a service residents pay for through their council tax payments.
Why can’t Greenwich Council retain their refuse drivers? There used to be a waiting list for refuse driver vacancies and it used to be the only job advertised by GLLAB on a rolling advert.
I agree with you Graham, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes a permanent arrangement by the back door. Council tax rises every year without fail so this amounts to non delivery of services paid for. I don’t advocate the private sector fulfilling these services but can you imagine if a private company renegaded on their contracted services?
I totally agree with Michael G and Graham comments.
We do pay for our bins to be collected each week through our council tax payments to the Council..So we do need notice of changes to bin collection dates.
Michael G is correct council tax rises every year with out fail and does amount to non delivery of services.
My understanding from friends at the agency who supply staff to the Council is Greenwich Council also use a lot of agency staff on a rolling contract basis. So why have not recruited agency drivers to get them through this period of the current refuse drivers shortage.
What about the supervisors and bin monitors that work for waste service’s they all have HGV licenses instead of sitting on their ar@@s in the office at birchmere help the crew’s out make a crew up.