The Barnet bin fiasco update - The Council call in the cavalry!

Firstly lets start with this weeks apology from the Leader of Barnet Council.

The Leader of Barnet Council has provided an update on the progress being made in relation to the new recycling and waste collections.

The Leader of Barnet Council, Councillor Richard Cornelius, said: “I’m pleased to report that we have started this week on a positive note, building on the progress that we started to see last week.
“The vast majority of collections were completed to schedule yesterday and we are carrying out collections scheduled for today. We expect to complete these by the end of today.
“We will continue to build on this progress this week by doing our utmost to collect residents’ recycling and waste on the allocated days. We have brought in additional staff to help us do this.”
Refuse collections on a small number of roads in the N20, and EN5 areas, specifically flats and roads with narrow access, could not be completed yesterday. These collections have now been completed.
There were also some collections that could not be carried out yesterday in the Mays Lane area due to utilities works blocking access to bins. We will return to carry out these collections as soon as possible, when access is available.
If your bin is not collected, please leave it out at the boundary of your property and it will be collected as soon as possible. Barnet Council will be collecting real Christmas trees up until Sunday, 3 February 2019 if they are left out by residents' bins on their correct collection day.
To report a missed bin collection, please visit here

There definately seems to have been a marked improvement in the collection rates. Last week Edgware Councillor Linda Freedman claimed on Facebook "We are having a much better week this week – we have deployed additional resources and are fully up to date with Monday and Tuesdays collections. We will have a full service operating tomorrow that will be capable of collection all of Thursdays work, along with any excess material that we didn’t collect last week."

 I was intrigued by this and emailed the CEO of the Council John Hooton, to clarify what was going on. I had rather hoped that he would be keen to inform residents of what was going on. Sadly, Mr Hooton doesn't seem to consider responding to residents as part of his job. Yesterday I think the mystery of the "extra resources" was solved.  As I was walking the dogs in Mill Hill, I saw a bin lorry collecting commercial waste from the offices on the Watford Way. I was intrigued to see that the binmen were wearing Harrow Council hi vis jackets.

I made some enquiries (another unanswered email to Mr Hooton and a call to contacts in the council). I also posted a question on facebook on the Mill Hill group. It seems that quite a few residents had noticed these extra resources. It is quite clearly a good thing that the piles of rubbish are being cleared. What is not such a good thing is how much all of this must be costing. The bin rounds were reorganised to save money. Bringing in the cavalry from Harrow must be costing a fortune. Ultimately the whole reorganisation has been a complete fiasco. The council was forced into this because they have mismanaged finances and now they are spending a fortune just to keep things on track.