News MBC working hard to catch up on waste collections
The Maidstone Borough Council (MBC) waste team is working hard with its new contract supplier SUEZ to catch up with collections for residents.
The new waste and recycling contract started on 25 March which introduced some considerable changes. Since then, the collection teams have been trying to learn the new routes and systems to make the service as efficient as possible.
Jennifer Stevens, Head of Environmental Service and Waste Management at MBC said:
“As is the case with all new services of this scale, it was anticipated that there would be some challenges as the new routes bed in. The crews are learning their new routes and this can be particularly difficult in rural areas or where collection points may be less obvious. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and would like to assure people that we are working as hard as we can to correct any issues as quickly as possible.“The Council would like to thank residents for their continued support and understanding as the new waste and recycling contract with SUEZ is being rolled out and some collections are taking longer than normal.”
The new contract has been running for less than two weeks and the teams are working hard to learn the new routes, use new vehicles which are configured differently as well as using new technology where they record collections on handheld machines.
To help combat these issues the Council and SUEZ are putting in place additional resources to help with the situation including bringing in staff from other areas, reviewing collections and reallocating work as needed and the waste crews will be working again this Saturday (6 April) as they did last weekend.
This is being carried out in order to help catch up on any missed collections from this week and residents are asked to leave their bin out if they are due to have a collection and the crew will get to them as soon as possible.
Vincent Masseri, General Manager at SUEZ, said:
“There can be challenges in the first few weeks of a new collection service as crews get used to new routes, trucks and technology. We understand the frustration when collections aren’t made on the scheduled day, we’d like to apologise to the households affected and reassure residents that our teams are working hard to minimise disruption on the ground.“The service continues to improve each day and we thank residents for bearing with us. In the meantime, please leave your bins out if they have not been collected and we will get to them as soon as possible.”
Jennifer Stevens continued:
“With more than 17,000 bins to collect every day it was expected there would be some disruption and delays to a small number of collections as the changes take place. It may take a few weeks for the crews to learn the new routes and get used to the pod vehicles, so we really do appreciate the understanding of our residents. However, I have no doubt that, once established, the new contract will deliver a more reliable and improved service to everyone.”
Residents are being reminded that the week and day of their collections may have changed, including those subscribed for garden waste collections. So remember to check the letter the council sent to every household or use: https://maidstone.gov.uk/bin-day.
The state-of-the-art new fleet of vehicles has live tracking and CCTV to alert managers at SUEZ and MBC in real-time if, and when, problems occur. There is also a fleet of smaller vehicles for areas that have access issues.