Rise in complaints to Kirklees Council about missed bin collections after 'blip' in winter

A meeting of Kirklees Council’s Corporate Governance and Audit Committee heard an update from Chris Read - the authority’s corporate customer standards officer – on customer standards and complaints handling.

While the broad picture was generally positive, Mr Read explained that there had been an increase in the number of Stage 3 complaints, especially in two areas.

He said: “One of them relates to SEND, which is a national issue.

“The other area we got an increase in is refuse complaints and as members will probably remember just before Christmas there was a bit of a double hit in terms of changing the rounds and also changing the wagons which caused some issues with collections and that takes a while to feed into the complaints process so we are perhaps at the end of looking at refuse collection complaints that arise from that little period when we had a blip.”

While the number of Stage 3 complaints has risen significantly on the figures for 22/23 – going up from 56 to 81 in 23/24 – the numbers are now back in line with those reported annually since 2017.

Committee member Coun James Homewood (Labour, Ashbrow) felt that better communication would improve the complaints process and reduce the number being made.

He explained that after speaking to officers about the problems with bin collections, it “appeared” that nobody had spoken to residents.

He said: “How is the resident supposed to know, for example, leave your bin out to be collected the next day, if nobody tells them that?

"How are they supposed to know that actually if they move the bin to the front of the property rather than to the rear, for example, that it might get collected, if nobody tells them that?”

Mr Read explained that work was ongoing to improve things in the refuse service and added: “I think the issue is the age-old problem – when you’re busy you don’t have time to communicate.

"So, if you start getting a service that starts spiralling out of control a little bit for a period, then it’s very difficult to update and let people know.”