Senior councillors to ‘be held to account’ over botched launch of recycling scheme

Richard Evans, local democracy reporter

Cabinet members will be ‘held to account’ before a special council group to explain what went wrong with the disastrous launch of a new recycling service.

After the failed launch of its new bin and recycling service in June last year, Denbighshire County Council is setting up a special group as part of a review.

At a meeting this Thursday (January 30) at the council’s Ruthin County Hall HQ, a performance scrutiny committee will consider a report detailing the failings of the service.

Councillors will then be asked to set up a task and finish group to undertake a 12-month review on what went wrong.

As part of the review, cabinet members will later be called to give evidence before the task and finish group.

But the task and finish group won’t feature members of the current or previous cabinets, as they voted or made decisions on the new recycling scheme and ‘would have a prejudicial interest in any decisions taken’.

Complaints

Last summer the council was ‘inundated’ with complaints about uncollected waste – with those living in rural areas continuing to complain last week of not getting their bins and trolibocs emptied.

Speaking ahead of the meeting this week, Cllr Huw Hilditch-Roberts said it was only right that councillors were ‘held to account’.

“I think it is only right that cabinet members are held to account and questioned about the roll-out and the implementation (of the new bin and recycling service),” he said.

“There has been a lot of agony for residents of Denbighshire as well as the extra cost the authority has had to find to plaster over the implementation back in the summer.”

The report has been published ahead of the meeting.

Missed collections

The report states: “Within the first few weeks, it became apparent that a large number of domestic waste collections were being missed or delayed on a regular basis, causing frustration and anger amongst residents.

“This resulted in elected members and the council’s call centre being inundated with queries and complaints. For these reasons, the leader of the council along with the lead member for environment and transport submitted a scrutiny request seeking the council’s scrutiny function to examine in detail the problems created by the implementation of the new service, their causes, and the effectiveness of the response to mitigate the impact on residents.”

The document adds: “Several residents also contacted the council seeking it to examine the new system’s introduction and to examine matters relating to the service’s user-friendliness for residents with disabilities and/or protected characteristics.”

The meeting takes place on Thursday.