With associated fanfare the local councils’ “Mid Kent Waste Partnership Service” has replaced the old domestic waste and recycling contrator with a new one - supposedly featuring “New” vehicles with a different specification and some changes of collection day; the only vehicle I have seen around was 66 reg. There are some reports that the crew on each vehicle has been reduced from two plus driver to one plus driver. The result has been chaos with thousands of missed collections with food waste, rubbish and recycling piling up through out a significant area of the county… The old contractor is supposed to have withdrawn from the tender because they predicted the council’s requirements were unworkable. The Councils’ suits meanwhile are trumpeting their plans for the crews to work a third weekend on the trot.These drivers will probably be on Domestic regs, but I don’t see that a predicted breakdown in an essential public service counts as an emergency exemption from rest requirements.
Sounds like a poor service for the residents; I used to do quite a bit of bin and recycling work, we worked Mon to Fri under EU rules, using a tacho even though tacho exempt (for WTD/RTD calculation purposes). After I moved on to other work, the remaining crews went to a Tuesday to Friday routine but with longer days, thus avoiding issues surrounding Bank Holidays. So these guys got a three day weekend every week.
Eventually this external contract was taken back in house by the council. It sounds like this new contract was accepted on price, and the price kept low to get the contract achieved by lower staffing levels
@cav551 have you tried reporting that your bins haven’t been collected unless i am being stupid thurs to sun the website said they knew no bins had been collected so no need to report it as they were working on it. then first thing monday morning it said its too late to report them as they were not going to do anything about it
in case your interested i saw 2 bin wagons yesterday round by the big park one was a 23 plate and one was 24 plate both diesel