Recycling crisis nearly caused chief exec, leader, and director to leave

Richard Evans, local democracy reporter

A council’s chief executive, corporate director and council leader considered quitting their jobs over a shambolic roll-out of a new waste and recycling service, according to a leaked email.

Denbighshire County Council’s (DCC) disastrous launch of the “trolibocs” recycling scheme and bin collection in June 2024 led to it being inundated with complaints from residents about missed collections for months.

The council was forced to commit to spending millions more each year to resolve the botched roll-out on new recycling trucks and on wages for additional drivers and loaders, to ensure waste and recycling was collected.

Apologies

It led to calls for resignations and apologies from council’s chief executive and leader, with issues with the service continuing into 2025, such as rocketing levels of sickness and stress in the crisis-hit recycling department, uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act Now an email leaked by an ex-member of staff has revealed corporate director Tony Ward feared that the crisis could result in him leaving the authority, together with chief executive Graham Boase and council leader Jason McLellan. Mr Boase has since announced his retirement.

The email, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, was sent by the corporate director to a department head, asking for staff volunteers from other departments to help with recycling collections. Sent at the height of the recycling crisis, Mr Ward’s email revealed the scale of the issue facing the authority.

He wrote: “We regularly had about eight people from countryside (services) supporting the waste service.

“We need at least that level of support now and every single day for the next few weeks. I obviously know that this is really difficult for you as a service, and that services will suffer, and things won’t get done.”

‘Serious’

He added: “However, those things are not going to result in the corporate director and/or chief exec and/or leader of the council leaving DCC in August. Any further failure in the waste service will result in that happening. It is that serious.”

Problems continued into the autumn of 2024 with residents complaining of missed and late collections. Pointing to the high sickness levels, the ex-member of staff told the local democracy reporting service the recycling department was in a mess at the time and that staff were “stressed out”.

They added. “The volunteers who covered the recycling, they weren’t adequately trained, and the council played down the number of volunteers they were using.”

A council spokesperson said: “This was a serious situation akin to an emergency, and therefore it was agreed that the council should use whatever resources required to manage the situation. The number of staff volunteering during the initial roll-out of the recycling service fluctuated from day to day but averaged out at three per day in the period from July to end August 2024, as quoted by the Leader in the full Council meeting on 10 September and later by the Corporate Director: Environment and Economy in the Cabinet meeting on 1 October.”

“The council takes its health and safety duties very seriously and employees who volunteered to assist during the waste roll-out received the basic training required to fulfil the roles that they were carrying out. Generally, these volunteers were not carrying out the full duties of waste operatives therefore they would not have received the same level of training.”