A RESIDENT has accused a bin collection service of being a “catalogue of incompetence”.

Company director Nick O’Shea, of Westbourne Villas, Hove, complained to his ward councillor after his recycling was left stacked in the streets for three weeks.

He said: “Our rubbish hasn’t been collected for three weeks.

“It’s all piling up down the street.

“What is the point of separating our recycling out for it to just blow down the street into the sea?

“Cityclean keep saying they are overhauling refuse collections, but the council should be ensuring the contract is being upheld.

“The only way to get your rubbish collected is to report it to the website – but that’s not a system for running the city’s waste collections.

“The council should be monitoring the contract performance and taking measure against the contractor for their failures – or if they cannot deliver the contract, get someone who can.

“The council blames a lot of staff sickness – but they need to look at the underlying issues of why that is.

“The whole refuse service is a catalogue of incompetence and mismanagement.”

Responding to Mr O’Shea, Brighton and Hove city councillor Chris Henry accepted that Cityclean was effectively running a “request a collection” service.

He said: “Cityclean have had many problems throughout 2019 including high rates of staff sickness and broken down trucks.

“We are told over and over by Cityclean that the best thing for residents to do is to report missing collections. I am frustrated by this because sometimes it feels like the service is almost a ‘request a collection’. However, reporting missed collections does work and does get Cityclean to direct a team to your area.

“In better news I’m told that there are new trucks ordered and will be appearing in the city this year. The staffing problems are being tackled too and at the moment more temporary staff are being taken on.

“I’m really sorry that our area, Westbourne, is being affected this way but please be reassured that I am raising this on a weekly basis within the council and within Cityclean.”

Between January 13 and 26, one fifth of the city’s bin workers were not at work.

That worked out to about 20 staff each day. It was costing the council £11,000 a week to bring in an army of agency workers to plug the gap.

The council said this was due to sickness and “unexpected” annual leave.

A council spokesman said: “We are aware of issues with collections in certain areas and are working hard to get these back on track.”