The former leader of Allerdale council says refuse contractor FCC Environment must be held to account for the failings in the borough's new bin contract.

Councillor Alan Smith, who was the authority's leading politician when the new eight-year deal was signed in April, said that if his party was still in control of the council, it would have held urgent talks with bosses at the firm to ensure a solution was found.

Now Labour group leader, he said: “We have seen little evidence that the new executive has a handle on the situation but it is vital that they hold the contractor to account.

"If Labour still controlled the council, we would have invited FCC’s chief executive to Allerdale House and locked the door until a resolution was found.”

In a statement, the Labour group has demanded that the council urgently looks into:

  • The decision to cancel green waste collections and continue with paper collection in peak gardening season when many residents have expressed that temporary storage or alternative disposal of paper would be more practical.
  • The decision to not empty the existing bins before implementing the cancellation gardens waste, leaving many residents’ bins full with rotting waste that will not be emptied for several weeks.
  • What remedial measures can we offer local residents over the summer to help deal with problems arising from the cancelled service, such as providing extra disposal sites or temporarily reintroducing the purple bag scheme for mixed recycling?

The group described the decision to suspend some waste collection as "staggering".

Former executive member Coun Michael Heaslip, who is now the party's shadow member for environmental quality, defended the decision to award the contract to FCC Environment.

He said: “At the end of 2018, while still in control of the council, we awarded a new waste collection contract. A robust tendering process and due diligence, which lasted nearly two years, included external professional advice, benchmarking against similar contracts and cross-party scrutiny.

"The successful bidder was an existing contractor with 15 years’ experience collecting waste in Allerdale. The new contract which was implemented at the start of April was to deliver a saving of about £400,000 per annum while also securing a Living Wage Foundation rate for the waste collection workforce. This was delivered in the context of Conservative government austerity cuts which has slashed central government support to the borough council by 96 per cent since 2010.”

The Labour group said its councillors had followed up numerous complaints from residents about missed bin collections in recent months.

Its statement said: "Until last week council staff were still expressing the view that these issues were down the introduction of new delivery rounds and the loss of some local knowledge by collection crews.

"It was obvious by the increasing number of complaints and number of residents reporting the same issue week after week that something was seriously wrong.

"Until last Friday’s faceless press release cancelled bin collection services across the borough, Labour councillors have been kept in the dark to the true scale of this crisis."