ANGRY residents have demanded action and change to fortnightly bin collections in Southampton.

One month after the collections changed from weekly to every other week, community members have voiced their outrage at the state of the roads with rubbish lying around.

A Lordshill woman said it had been five weeks before her bins were emptied on Monday.

The plans first attracted controversy in February when residents voiced their discontent with Southampton City Council, which said the change would saying it would save them £800,000 a year.

More than 1,500 people have also signed an online petition to reverse the decision.

Angela Hockey, 66, of Lordshill, said couldn't understand why the bin men had taken so long to collect her waste, leaving it outside her homes for five weeks.

Angela said: “I can see how they might miss it, as the gate isn’t where you’d expect it to be for our homes, but how they kept going past it, I don’t understand.

“If it’s new bin men, surely they’d be given a map of some sort to help them. I phoned the council multiple times, and spoke to councillor Don Thomas, who said he would help sort the issue.

“There were occasions where they would walk past this pile of waste to get other people’s rubbish, and I had to run out and tell them where our rubbish was. We need to go back to weekly collections now, it smells awful in this heat.”

Other residents in the city have called for the city council to bin the fortnightly collections after piles of ‘stinking’ waste built up on the street.

William Burns, 59, of Portswood, said: “No one is willing to listen to the residents, that’s the problem. The savings the council is making because of this just isn’t worth it. The streets are stinking because, especially with the heatwave we’ve had, the bins are overflowing.

“The council says the changes will encourage more people to recycle, but there’s no more room on the streets for any more bins. We need to go back to weekly collections. We should bin it now.”

One Portswood student said that although, stereotypically, they weren’t the best at recycling, the issue of increased waste on the streets isn’t all down to students in the city.

James Mulqueeny, 21, said: “Maybe we’re not the best at sorting our waste, and students will be contributing to the increased rubbish, because a lot of students are moving out to go back home at this time of year.

“But I don’t think it’s entirely our problem, we don’t like to see bin bags lying in the road, overflowing the bins either. It should go back to the way it was a month ago.”

City councillor Don Thomas, pictured above, said residents were rightfully upset and angry as a result of the cuts to collection services.

Cllr Thomas said: “It’s having a real adverse effect. Residents have told me that foxes, rats and cats are ripping open rubbish bags, leaving it untidy and giving off a filthy stench.

“Trying to report a missed bin collection seems to take forever, and even then if you are lucky enough to get through to speak to someone, the council is slow to react to picking up the damaged bins.

“I want to be clear, the bin men do a sterling job, it’s the council who need to get their act together. It really cannot be that difficult to organise.”

Daily Echo:

Cabinet member for Environment and Transport, Councillor Jacqui Rayment, pictured above, said: “We have already distributed over 1700 increased capacity bins and have 577 still to be delivered. We would ask any households who are still waiting for a larger bin to please bear with us, we are doing all we can, including delivering the new bins at weekends in order to clear the backlog.

“We are aware that some households in the city have concerns over the recent changeover to alternate weekly bin collections. We have a reactive crew in place that is making clean-up rounds and ensuring that any extra waste is collected. We’re asking residents to report incidents that need to be dealt with so we can then respond accordingly.”

“Some of the bin crews have swapped to new rounds as part of the changeover to the new collections schedule. Unfortunately there have been some missed collections as the crews familiarise themselves with the new rounds.

“This, coupled with the new schedule, has meant that a few small areas in the city have experienced longer timeframes between collections than we anticipated. However, the new schedule is now established and these incidents should not happen in the future.

“I can confirm that an area in Lordshill was one of the locations in question. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused by this oversight.

“We have been working closely with both Universities in the city to ensure that the excess waste that is encountered when students move out of shared households is dealt with as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“The volume of waste this year has been has been significant and is continuing to require support in order to keep streets clean and tidy. The reactive crew has gone out on a daily basis for the last few weeks to deal with this, going above and beyond what can be expected of them in order to stay on top of the problem.

“Over 70% of other Local Authorities have already changed over to alternate weekly bin collections. We’re confident that residents in Southampton can also manage their waste effectively. Recycling correctly will free up space in  general waste bins and double bagging waste during heatwaves helps to prevent flies and odours.

“We will continue to review the bin collection service and will take on board the feedback from residents.”