Letters: Not a rosy picture for some in New Forest

I read with interest the letter in last week’s edition from the representative of the New Forest District Council extolling the success of the new refuse and bin operation.

Well maybe overall the picture for him may be encouraging but for some of us it has been very much less so. The expression “jam tomorrow” comes to mind.

Our food caddies have now been sitting outside waiting for collection for nearly a week. Full of food rubbish which rots and smells. They stand the risk of attracting animals and vermin. We receive information on possible collections via our community WhatsApp group when one of its members has been amazingly and unusually successful, through sheer patience, in contacting the appropriate department in the council. The waiting time by telephone can be up to 25 minutes. The published coloured timetable issued by the council seems to bear little relevance.

So these caddies sit in the road outside of our gates for a considerable length of time and present a target to all sorts of traffic, particularly delivery drivers and tractors with farm machinery. It becomes a bore to have to move them in every night and then put them out early in the morning on the off chance that a collection might happen. Equally for the large bins, these too present traffic hazards when they left out too long after a failed collection. Here again they can be taken in and put out again, but this is quite a pain, particularly for elderly and disabled residents. Glass collection is another casualty of the new system. Failure for that to be collected means removing the boxes back into the premises to avoid the danger of them being knocked over with a resulting broken glass situation.

We are told that the collections fail because of the shortage of staff. As has been pointed out elsewhere, we pay a very large amount of council tax, so why can the staff levels not be increased? Or why can more overtime not be allocated? Perhaps we should be reimbursed on a daily basis for when collections are missed?

Michael Robjohn

Boldre