A giant firm's performance in collecting rubbish from bins has been very poor, according to a council report.

The French waste firm Sita took over the rubbish contracts in Brighton and Hove from other firms in November last year.

The report to councillors says: "Performance to date on refuse collections has fallen well below the level Sita or the council would have wished."

One of the worst experiences was after the Spring Bank Holiday when almost a third of people lost a weekly collection.

But environment director Alan McCarthy said steps were in hands to bring about an improvement.

He said because Sita took over from several different organisations, it had four separate sick pay and holiday schemes and 23 different rates of pay for blue-collar staff.

Key weekend and Bank Holiday work was voluntary and people doing similar jobs in Hove work longer hours than in Brighton for less pay.

Supervisors who are key to a good service delivery have not been conditioned to assess performance against a target and keep written records.

Mr McCarthy said: "The net effect of this is that the workforce is not working with a common purpose."

He said contracts will be made consistent but because of the complexity and sensitivity of the issue, progress is slow.

But the report says Sita, which is being paid £1.8 million a year more than its predecessor, has also made many improvements.

These include better clearance of rubbish from the seafront and partnership with Magpie co-operative to improve recycling.

Figures show Sita is missing collecting around 120 bins per 100,000 collections in Brighton and Hove.

The percentage of roads and pavements regarded as cleaned to a high standard has ranged between 20 and 42, while those acceptably clean has ranged between 49 and 72.