The saga of the missing bin

For a number of years I resided in a house with a very large garden and in 2015 paid the council the £25 fee to empty the brown garden waste bin,until July 2016.
By The Newsroom
Published 30th Aug 2016, 16:00 BST
Updated 7th Jun 2018, 20:17 BST

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However, due to age/ill health I found it difficult to manage the large house and garden and so decided to downsize to the much more manageable bungalow next door.

On selling my then current house I moved into the new property late August 2015 and had numerous people to inform of my move.

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Rother District Council were informed for their records relating to the garden waste bin by email some two weeks prior to my move.

So far so good and for the next few months the garden bin continued to be emptied from my new address.

Then,in the spring of 2016, a council letter addressed to me but to my old address informed me that the bin collection for 2016-17 would now be £35 and a cheque for this amount dated 24/5/16 was handed in to the council and they were reminded of my change of address back in 2015. The cheque cleared my bank in June 2016.

A short while later a further letter addressed to the occupier of my home, pointed out that no fee had been received from the occupier for the bin collection service which would/could be terminated.

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The council were once again informed of my move and given details of the cheque and when it cleared.

On the August 18 2016 on returning to my home, surprise surprise, my garden waste bin had disappeared!

The following day my phone call to a very polite and pleasant lady at the council resulted in her giving me an absolute assurance that the council had not removed the bin or made any request for any outside agency to remove the bin, and the council computer system showed my correct address and the service paid for.

Further enquiries made by me, revealed that the bin had been removed by KIER contractors to the council and my visit to their depot in St Leonards on August 22 showed they had been asked to remove the bin on July 27 due to non-payment of the fee,and they removed it on 18/8/16 on behalf of the council.

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Then the next day, following my call to the council and the assurances by them of having no knowledge of the bins removal, KIER received a further, hurried instruction to reinstate the bin as it had been paid for.

Having been put to a lot of inconvenience, time wasting, and expensive phone calls, I must ask if such a simple matter of my change of address causes so much confusion to their staff and computer systems are either really fit for purpose.

A letter of apology would be nice but would no doubt be sent to the wrong address so I won’t hold my breath and God help us if the council should ever have a major incident to deal with.

Bryan A Hubble

Abbey View

Bexhill

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