Deputy leader apologises, admits East Suffolk bin crisis needs outside help

Why it matters: Residents across East Suffolk have faced missed collections, delayed bin deliveries and poor communication since the scheme launched. Cllr Ashton told councillors the issues were no longer "teething problems" and that outside help was needed to recover the service.

The details: Opening the item, council leader Cllr Caroline Topping said: "To those residents who have been affected by ongoing collection issues, we all accept that it has not been good enough for everyone, and as leader of the council, I take responsibility."

Cllr Ashton, who leads on the response, then set out a lengthy account of what has gone wrong and what the council is doing about it. He said the main issues were:

• Incomplete rounds that the council has not always been able to catch up on
• Some households, mainly but not exclusively in hard-to-reach areas, receiving virtually no collections at all
• New vehicles experiencing mechanical issues unfamiliar to the council's mechanics
• Crews still getting up to speed with new routes and equipment
• Weight calibration problems on lorries, forcing more frequent and cautious trips to the tipping site
• Ongoing driver recruitment and retention problems across Suffolk, which he said had been worsened locally by Sizewell C
• A spike in sick leave among crews
• Congestion at the shared tipping station used by multiple councils

He also pointed to a run of bad luck in June, including the two hottest days of the year, a car fire on the A14 that held up collection vehicles, and a signal failure causing congestion on the A12. "We've had everything thrown at us," he said.

Cllr Ashton said a realistic trial of the new service had not been possible ahead of launch, as trial communications could only be sent by letter to avoid confusing residents outside the trial, and food waste collection required new "clusters" of streets that could not be tested without disrupting existing rounds.

What's being done: The council has hired a specialist waste operations troubleshooter with what Cllr Ashton described as a 20-year track record of resolving similar issues at other councils. The troubleshooter is contracted for four months, starting in August.

East Suffolk Services Ltd (ESSL), the council-owned company that delivers the waste contract, has also been issued with a formal contract notice alongside a joint improvement plan. Cllr Ashton said there had been "sharp words exchanged" with ESSL's management, but that staff were "trying very hard" to put things right.

Other measures include:

• Additional recovery crews working Saturdays and Mondays
• Recruiting and training more drivers and customer service staff
• Contract extensions for residents who pay for garden waste collections and have missed them
• Ensuring the right size and type of vehicle reaches properties that are harder to access

For the small number of households still affected by repeated missed collections, crews have temporarily been collecting all bins together on the same visit – a short-term sticking plaster rather than how the service is meant to operate.

By the numbers:

• 302 requests for new bins were still outstanding at the start of Wednesday, out of roughly 123,000 households across the district
• The council is receiving around 60 bin requests a day, not all related to the rollout, and delivering about 100 new bins daily
• More than 53,000 people have downloaded the council's app, with over 40,000 signed up for collection notifications
• Recycling rates have risen by almost 10 percentage points since Better Recycling launched, according to Cllr Ashton
• On the day before the meeting, residual, mixed recycling and paper/card collections reached 99% completion, garden waste 88%, and food waste 90%, however this has not been anywhere close to consistent

What they're saying: Cllr Sally Noble, Cabinet member for the Environment, also apologised. "I will not portion the blame. I will not pass the buck, but I will, without fail, work with council colleagues and officers to ensure that Better Recycling East Suffolk is a success," she said, adding that she had personally responded to hundreds of resident emails.

On a particularly bad day of collections, Cllr Ashton said newly added properties had not been correctly logged onto delivery rounds, resulting in repeated visits to the same streets. "It is what it is," he said, adding: "Work is clearly needed on garden waste."

He also said: "The majority of people have received a good service with little to no disruption," and described the situation with outstanding bin deliveries as "not untypical" compared with other councils' experience of similar rollouts.

The other side: Not all councillors were satisfied with the level of detail on offer. Cllr Peter Byatt asked for a full public report on what went wrong and the lessons learned. Cllr Ashton said it was too early to produce one, but committed to a post-implementation review, which he said he would be open to the council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee examining.

Cllr Julia Ewart asked Cllr Vince Langdon-Morris, Cabinet member for Resources and Value for Money, why budgetary pressures linked to Better Recycling had not been more fully reported to Cabinet the previous week, and who had authorised the spending involved. Cllr Langdon-Morris said the scheme cost around 60p per household per week, funded partly through Extended Producer Responsibility payments and a central government grant, but did not confirm the total sums involved, saying he would respond in writing. Cllr Ewart said this had not answered her question, and the council's chair confirmed a written response would follow.

The bigger picture: Wednesday's meeting followed a week of mounting pressure on the council's leadership. In two letters made public the week before, Independent Cllr Julia Ewart called for a cross-party "Cabinet of Unity" to replace the current administration, and separately wrote to the council's Monitoring Officer citing a statutory duty to assess governance risks around the Better Recycling rollout.

No proposal to change the composition of the Cabinet was raised at Wednesday's meeting, and Cllr Ashton's lengthy apology appeared to ease some of that pressure. However, with a formal post-implementation report, a full financial breakdown and a stable service all still pending, scrutiny of the council's leadership seems likely to resume if the rollout does not settle down quickly.

What's next: Cllr Ashton said the immediate priority was consistency, particularly on food waste collections. Residents whose bins are missed alongside their neighbours' are asked not to report it, as the council already knows the round is incomplete and will catch up within days. Residents whose bins are missed while their neighbours' were collected are asked to report it directly. Residents are encouraged to download the app.

The bottom line: Nearly two months into the Better Recycling rollout, East Suffolk Council has moved from defending the service to admitting it needs outside help to fix it – but with a formal report and full financial breakdown still to come, questions over cost and accountability remain unresolved.

Previously

This is a developing story. Here's our previous reporting for context:

Leaked report exposes depth of East Suffolk’s bin crisis

An internal report seen by this publication shows 45,936 bin collections were still missed last week, nearly two months into the troubled bin rollout in East Suffolk. Officers describe “marked improvement”, but the figures, and a growing row around them, tell a different story.

Ipswich.co.ukOliver Rouane-Williams

Bin rollout woes fuel calls for East Suffolk council shake-up

Seven weeks into a troubled recycling rollout, and with residents reportedly threatening legal action, a senior councillor says East Suffolk Council’s governance – not just its bins – is now in question.

Ipswich.co.ukOliver Rouane-Williams

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