Update from Cllr Warneken on bin collections
Published: 02 August 2024
2nd August 2024
Hello Ouseburn residents,
This week waste collection in my Division Ouseburn hit an all time low in quality of service.
I spent a high percentage of my time trying to make sure your Recyclables, General Waste and Garden Waste were not left on the street.
There is always an explanation when council services are not preforming to our expectations so in the process of getting this weeks sorted I also requested an honest and accurate explanation and below is the officers response.
It’s not good news as in the short term we will still experience problems but I’ve always worked on the principle that when there is a problem I would like to know what we are dealing with rather than have no information or worse still made up explanations and the subsequent “Chinese whispers.”
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STARTS
Good morning, Cllr Warneken
The Harrogate Locality is having to deal with what have been historical issues but ones myself and North Yorkshire Council must address, we need to address the issues to allow us long term to improve the services we provide and mean all waste collections are carried out on the day of collection during the working week.
What we are addressing is as follows:
Numerous staff on long term sick
Short term sickness absence
Various contractual hours of staff on former Harrogate Borough Council contracts meaning various finishing times of staff impacting waste collection rounds.
Changing a culture
The sickness levels are impacting the service and with staff also on their entitled annual leave this places and is placing massive pressures on the service, we are making very good inroads regarding sickness with some staff having departed, we do have a recruitment process underway to fill vacant posts but this can and on many occasions is a seven week process from advert – interview – start date, we have four new staff starting Monday, with further recruitment being undertaken, where under the former HBC they constantly over recruited meaning large increased additional expenditure on casual staff this did not resolve the problems above, so we are tackling the issues we currently have so we can provide long term a productive, efficient, stable and sustainable cost effective service for the residents of Harrogate and surrounding areas.
We are also looking at the waste collection round routes which were implemented under the old Harrogate Borough Council which are causing problems, add to these the numerous new housing developments this adds another pressure on the service.
The Management team are working tirelessly to provide solutions, not just plaster over the problems we are facing so we provide not just a short term but a long-term solution, as you will be aware as part of this development, we currently have the live consultation around the future working model.
I fully appreciate the frustrations of residents, but I can assure we are working extremely hard to put in place solutions, and I have requested the Locality Manager investigate the social media posting.
Kind Regards
Brian
ENDS
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Thank you for your understanding and please continue to keep me updated as I will continue to try and work my best for you to minimise the impact whilst the service undergoes its improvement measure.
Arnold