Bin collections: Kirklees Council admits size of new bin wagons meant collections were missed

Kirkburton ward councillor, Bill Armer (Con), brought the issue up at a council meeting, saying a number of households in his ward “no longer receive an adequate bin collection service” due to new, larger vehicles, and wanted to know what steps the council is taking to ensure residents get their rubbish collected.

In response, cabinet member for the Environment Coun Aafaq Butt said the council’s recent vehicle replacement programme included 18 new refuse collection vehicles in its 90-strong fleet.

“The vehicles recently brought into our fleet are marginally larger in width than the outgoing vehicles which has indeed resulted in a small number of access issues,” he said.

"To ensure a consistent service for residents in difficult to access locations who have been affected, the service has been working to rebalance the workload of our special access vehicle to create capacity which should be completed before the end of the month.”

Coun Armer asked further questions on the matter, asking Coun Butt whether he felt it had been handled appropriately by the council. He also wanted to know how much the new vehicles had cost.

Coun Butt explained that while he didn’t know the cost of the bin wagons alone, the vehicles were switched as part of the council’s £6.25m vehicle replacement programme that was approved by cabinet in 2021.

The cash was invested to make the council’s vehicles greener and more high-tech, replacing some ageing vehicles.

Coun Armer said: “Given that this council faces severe financial pressures, and that I am now informed that the new vehicles cannot access all the properties in my ward, does the cabinet member consider this to have been an efficient and effective use of scarce, financial resources?”

Coun Butt replied: “It does cost a lot of money to service older vehicles so therefore I think it’s a good way of investing in that.

"We sometimes have to invest money to be able to save money in the longer term and I believe that this was the right way to do that.”

The council previously put the lack of collections down to a “technical fault”.