RURAL homes in the Ashbourne area are still waiting for bins to be collected after the chaotic hand-over of waste and recycling services.
Derbyshire Dales District Council changed the contractors earlier this year before moving to a new waste and recycling system tendered by Serco which aimed to boost recycling rates and save the council £385,000.
However, while the majority of the system is now operating properly, more than a month on from the hand-over, some rural areas have been waiting weeks for waste collection.
Peter Thellusson of Marston Montgomery said: “It is now three weeks since we have had anything collected. It’s getting serious now.
“The problem now is that so many bags are outside that rats are getting at them.
“I have been talking to three different departments at the district council. They are so incompetent, they will never ring back and they are always passing the buck on to someone else.
“It’s so badly run, nobody communicates, nobody makes a plan and nobody comes back to me.” Nancy Gee lives at Newton Grange and has been waiting almost five weeks for the waste and recycling collections to operate properly. She said: “It was on October 18 that this all started.
“It has been a complete and utter fiasco. I’ve personally been to Matlock to speak to them.
“They keep telling me I’ve got the wrong kind of bags, but I’m doing what they’ve told me to do.” A spokesman for Derbyshire Dales District Council said: “We are conscious that although Serco has added significant extra resources to rectifying early problems on the new waste and recycling service, some isolated problems still remain.
“While clearly the vast majority of households in the Derbyshire Dales are now recycling more than ever before and the number of calls we are receiving from local residents is reducing, we won’t be happy until 100 per cent of our residents are satisfied with the new service.
“Therefore we continue to monitor Serco’s progress daily.”
