A SENIOR councillor has expressed his anger after rubbish was left to pile up across the borough.

As previously reported fifty-one residents who live on Wateridge Road had been left with their green bin rubbish, after the council failed to collect their bins on May 12.

Steve Rolfe, is just one of the residents who has been left angry at his bin situation.
Since then Steve has confirmed the rubbish has been collected on the road but it has been made clear that other areas of the borough have not had theirs collected.

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The leader of the Basingstoke and Deane Independent group has said he would like to see waste collection done in-house, after he noticed on Saturday (May28) that rubbish had not been collected across areas of Norden.

Currently, the council is in a contract with serco, who collect rubbish across the borough.

Cllr Harvey, said: “A number of residents approached us last week about the issues on Wateridge Road and I am aware their bins have since been collected but as you make your way across the borough other areas in the Norden ward have been completely missed.”

He said that “green bins lined the street” while rubbish including cardboard is piling up across the borough.

He added: “Serco hace fully failed to deliver the services they are expected to deliver.

“We have been told they are short-staffed but that means that they cannot honour the contract they signed up to and that is really serious.

“The council needs to bring the service back in-house and they have the biggest single contract that the council awards.

“They didn’t even have the vans to begin with and the council had to fork out £5 million to buy them the waste trucks.”

James Farquhar, regional operations manager at Serco, added: “We would like to apologise to any residents who may be experiencing delays with their collections. We currently have seven LGV driver vacancies, which we are actively trying to fill but the national driver shortage is having an impact. 

“Despite the best efforts of the crews, who have been working additional hours to minimise any disruption, for which we thank them, some collections are still outstanding. If the bins have not been collected in your road, please leave them out and we will return as soon as we can. If just your bin has been missed, please use the online missed bin form to report https://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/MissedBin."

Despite this Cllr Harvey said that the “one thing that you expect the council to do is to collect your bins” but has been left angry because “they can’t even do that.”

Since then he took to Facebook to share the news that two waste trucks were out covering Norden on Sunday (May 29) to try and catch up.

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