YET more complaints have been received following Veolia’s controversial new plans for collecting rubbish around Bridgnorth district.
A resident from Oldington Farm off the A442, said she first became concerned after her usual Friday collection was missed. Catherine Pennington then contacted Shropshire Waste Management because at the time her bins had not been collected for nearly three weeks.
But after numerous conversations with the company, Mrs Pennington says she’s still not satisfied with what is expected of her.“They said they would not collect them because we live down a farm track,” she said.
“They want us to haul the bin bags half a mile to the main road so they can be collected once a fortnight. Leaflets were dropped through our doors a few days before the changes, but they said nothing about having to collect our own rubbish.
“I have two kids, one aged two-and-a-half and one aged five and now we are expected put them into our own cars and drive them down to a collection point — along with the rubbish.
“Rubbish collectors have specialist equipment and protective gloves and yet we have to carry the bags ourselves, it just seems really unhygienic. Effectively we have to pick up bags that are full of rotting waste and we have rats all round the place.”
Mrs Pennington said that her parents were also expected to haul their own rubbish to collection points.
“We are not the only cottage — it’s affecting people all the way along,” she added. “I understand about the need to recycle more and to stop things going to landfill, but this just doesn’t seem right.”
Donald Macphail, Managing Director of Veolia Environmental Services in Shropshire said: “In order to ensure a cost effective service to all Council tax payers in Shropshire we collect waste and recycling from the nearest adopted public highway.
“This is a Shropshire Waste Partnership policy which we are ensuring is uniformly implemented. We have a procedure for implementing this policy, if not already implemented, and we will give reasonable notice to householders before any change in service is applied. If this resident has not received notice they should contact us and we will follow the procedure properly before we implement the changes. We apologise if this has not occurred.”
Commenting on the new collection services Mr Macphail added: “Residents are advised to check their individual waste and recycling calendars which were delivered last month to ensure they put the correct waste and recycling materials out.”
