Thousands of people complained to Neath Port Talbot Council in the last year over missed bin collections, new figures show.
Residents in the county reported almost 1,000 times during 2018-19 that whole streets were missed by refuse collectors.
Meanwhile there were nearly 3,500 complaints from residents who had their rubbish and/or recycling bags left uncollected from their homes.
A report on missed bin collections is going before councillors on the local authority’s streetscene and engineering scrutiny committee on Friday, May 24.
The council carries out more than five million refuse and recycling collections each year from in excess of 66,000 homes in the county.
This includes more than 1.7m collections of refuse and 3.5m collections of recycling.
In the report officers said given the number of collections undertaken every year it was inevitable that on occasions some collections might not be made.
The report states: “This may be due to several factors – vehicle breakdown, crew changes, access issues due to roadworks or parked cars, late presentation or loader error.”
During 2018-19 a total of 4,694 missed collection calls were logged.
Officers said the percentage of collections missed was “significantly less than one half of 1%”.
The report states: “The figures quoted include all calls logged although inevitably some calls, when investigated, are found to be ‘unjustified’ for reasons such as presentation on the wrong week or day, late presentation, or the crews were still out collecting.
“Furthermore, if a street is missed for some reason such as vehicle obstructions multiple calls may be received concerning the same issue.”
Officers said they were “continually looking” to improve the service and were currently working to introduce a new system so that complaints could be logged against each crew “to assist with identifying any issues related to specific crews”.
