UPDATE (29/6/21): Somerset Bins and Recycling: COUNCILLORS NEED TO GET ANSWERS - Residents Unhappy Workers Unhappy

 

We Simply Asked Them Some Questions!
They Deleted The Post Without Explanation

UPDATE (29/6/21): Nothing so far from the councillors on the Joint Scrutiny Panel at Somerset County Council. We asked councillors to get answers, but we've had nothing from any of them.

We've chased up Somerset County Council to see if any of them bothered to address the issues that residents and workers raised with us.

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UPDATE (23/6/21): Do councillors represent the public or not? We've given them an opportunity to do so.

More evidence is coming to our attention. Another worker has told us that he was given agency work as a driver but ending up doing no work:

"got uniform done training then nothing ended up getting another job got fed up waiting".

Mickey Green, managing director of the SWP, told the Mendip District Council Scrutiny Board where Conservative Councillor Bente Height ranted about the poor service, that the SWP were trying to replace agency staff with workers on contracts.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COVID OR BREXIT.

Yet the SWP has put out press releases (PR) that claim that the shortage is down to these false reasons.

The SWP have a policy on employing employees instead of agency workers. The Covid and Brexit claims are false.

Or are workers being blacklisted? Are they not being employed for other reasons?

The people of Somerset deserve answers.

Somerset Independents have asked Somerset County Council to ensure that the issues that we have raised in this article below are asked at a Scrutiny Panel meeting today. Scrutiny Panels are supposed to grill council services. This is a contract farmed out by councillors, because elected representatives do not run the services in-house and they don't take responsibility for failures.

But the Council officer who runs the Panel has refused, because of the Council's rules designed to stop public participation at their meetings. You have to do it days in advance, or you are blocked from speaking or asking questions. It's ridiculous.

We have complained about these rules before - rules that councillors agreed and rules that mean the public is not represented and not heard.

We've asked the Council officer that all councillors are given the issues at hand. Today, we have heard again that drivers are available, given the uniform but are not being employed. Are they being blacklisted? What is going on?

So the councillors really need to get answers at the meeting, or the public will know that the councillors do NOT represent the public on the most basic of council services - the bins and the recycling.

The SWP contract is failing and if the problems aren't fixed, the contract needs to be terminated and consideration should be made of bringing the bins and recycling back in-house to be run directly by the councils.

Do you agree? Tell us by contacting us at the details here.

UPDATE (22/6/21): We have given the Somerset Waste Partnership a week to respond. They haven't answered our questions about the serious points made by residents and workers across  Somerset.

We've given them until the end of today and have been in touch with Head of PR, Nick Cater. He told us:

"Your email has been forwarded to colleagues and you will receive a reply as soon as possible."

But they have had the time to put out their PR, blaming Covid, Brexit, shortages of drivers and so on. We believe that they are being economical with the truth.

And still they don't respond to our questions and offers of a right of reply about allegations from residents and workers.

Meanwhile, we've received another worrying allegation about intimidation of a resident by an employee of the SWP, when the resident complained. The resident of Yeovil, who lives near the hospital but wanted to remain anonymous, told us:

"after issues with missed collections and boxes being left at random houses we complained. Few days later crew member knocked on our door wanting to know why we complained and he wanted to let us know that he lived nearby. He was quite in our face physically and it was more his tone and behaviour. Needless to say we leave the complaining to others now!!"

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UPDATE (15/6/21): We have asked the Somerset Waste Partnership questions. They didn't answer and they deleted our post on their Facebook page.

We asked residents if they were happy with the bins and recycling in Somerset, and the changes brought in by councillors from Mendip, South Somerset, Sedgemoor and SWT District Councils on the Somerset Waste Partnership (SWP). 

The SWP has an army of PR people trying to convince Somerset's people that they are doing a good job. They had the time to delete our post asking them some questions, but when we emailed them, they said:

"We are also experiencing extremely high levels of contact and it may take up to ten working days to respond to your email.

Post Deleted In Minutes
But Emails Not Responded To For 10 Days?

This isn't good enough.

As before, Somerset Independents has news counter to the claims of the Somerset Waste Partnership. We believe that they recruited people but then left them waiting for work. 

And workers have left the SWP in their droves, including drivers, for better work.

We have been told that workers have to wait each day to be picked for work. 

This is like used to happen down on the docks in the early 20th Century, as described by former General Secretary of the Transport General Workers Union, Jack Jones.

We now call these "zero hours contracts", where you have a "job" but no guaranteed hours. 

We question whether this is justified or wise, considering the shortages of workers.

What is the Somerset Waste Partnership and Is It Accountable?

Since the 2019 local elections, most of those councillors on the SWP are Liberal Democrats. But there are Green, Labour and Conservative councillors that have been involved in council's decisions over bins and recycling. Yet the SWP is "arms length" from the councils, with representatives from councils.

No councillor is directly elected to the SWP, unlike councils.

So it is an unaccountable QUANGO (quasi-non-governmental organisation). Who cares about that and why would they?

Because the lack of accountability is impacting on services. And service is poor.

Councillors are supposed to stand up for residents that elect them. But they haven't done anywhere near enough of this. If they had, the problems would no longer be there. But the problems have got worse.

And with the rollout of changes to bins and recycling in Mendip, it has been disastrous. This will affect other areas unless the problems are addressed.

 

Residents Are Unhappy and Workers Are Unhappy

When residents are unhappy, the buck gets passed from the council to the SWP. And back to the council. We know because we've seen it happen to residents.

Residents told us that they were very unhappy. 

It's all over Facebook, despite the SWP PR attempts to "manage communities", in the words of the Lib Dem's Mendip Evercreech Councillor Barry O'Leary at a Mendip Scrutiny meeting. 

One Mendip councillor - Conservative Bente Height - even ranted directly at SWP staff at the same Mendip Scrutiny meeting. We applauded that. And SWP apologised.

But now we are hearing of more problems. 

More problems in the Somerset West and Taunton area, e.g. 4,000 missed bins in Taunton.

More problems in the Sedgemoor area.

More problems in the Mendip area, e.g. 1,400 missed in Frome.

And the army of SWP PR people have gone into overdrive. Worse, councillors like naive Green Councillor Michael Dunk are even repeating their claims and acting as a PR representative. 

This is despite residents not getting the services that they have paid for in their council tax.

Surely councillors should be listening to residents and telling their council and the SWP councillor representatives from their council, that it isn't good enough?

The SWP claimed yesterday on its Facebook page:

"WASTE COLLECTION IN MENDIP:

In Frome around 1,400 recycling and 800 rubbish collection will be missed and returned for tomorrow.

Somerset Waste Partnership (SWP) said:

The main reason for disruption is a major nationwide driver shortage, coupled with local difficulties securing agency staff.

SWP’s collection contractor, SUEZ, has drafted in additional drivers from elsewhere in its operations for the coming weeks. However, unexpectedly high levels of sickness absence today has led to significant disruption as summarised below.

Crews are still out and the picture may change as the afternoon progresses. We will continue to post into local Facebook groups when further information is available.

SWP sincerely apologises for this disruption and asks for your patience as we work with our contractor to bring out services back on track in this tough period."

Frome Green Councillor Michael Dunk even repeated this PR spin in public. Yes, the same Michael Dunk who defended his Green Councillor colleague Francis Hayden for not paying his council tax for a nearly year. More about that elsewhere on this website.

 

But the PR spin from the SWP is counter to what we have been told. 

 

The full truth is more revealing.  

 

A resident of the Sedgemoor council area told us about the recruiting behaviour of the Somerset Waste Partnership, for a bin collector job:

"My relative went for a job collecting the bins. He got the job and him and some others went for their induction. They got given all their uniforms. He was then told to start on a certain date, when he arrived for work they sent him home again as they don’t need him that day. The next day they rang him before he left home again telling him they didn’t need him that day. They then kept giving him other start dates which were all then cancelled. That was a few months ago. He still hasn’t started and him still has the uniform as far as I know."

Added to the news that former drivers have also told us that they left the SWP for better work, it is clear that the Somerset Waste Partnership has serious employment issues.

We will be approaching the SWP for comment, because too many councillors are getting away with not standing up for residents. UPDATE - see top of the article for latest news.

Standing Up For Residents.