Council says bin collection in Irthlingborough has 'fallen short of what should be expected' as residents complain
Residents of a neighbourhood in Irthlingborough have been left without their bins being emptied for weeks.
David Nesbitt is a resident of Meeting Lane in Irthlingborough and has been affected by the fluctuating bin collections.
He said: "The service to this small area has been poor since September 2024 when the first complaint was made.
"The council have been kept informed of our problems, but nothing has been done to help us.
"Every communication from the council offers a different excuse and standard responses about missed bin collections all say the same thing – we will try to get back to you within two days – they never have.
“We don’t want special treatment. We don’t want to go onto some sort of register to have our bins collected and returned to our homes. We are fiercely independent and we look after each other.
"We never had this problem with East Northants Council.”
David says that residents of Meeting Lane have to take their bin to Nene View, and bins have always been returned to the collection point.
However, he says that since September bins have been left scattered the length of Nene View, and since Christmas bins have been left at the bottom of Church Street a considerable distance for the residents of Meeting Lane and Nene View, and on three occasions their bins haven’t been emptied at all.
In a letter sent to North Northants Council on March 25, David said: “The council do not appear to be able to organise a standard bin collection or to control their sub-contractors, although the system worked perfectly well for the 20-odd years I have lived in Meeting Lane until recently.”
Others in Nene View say they have been experiencing similar issues, with some saying there have been persisting problems for around five weeks.
In response, a North Northants Council spokesman said: “We can only apologise that the service we have offered these residents has fallen short of what should be expected.
“We continue to liaise directly with the residents in question and have assigned an officer to the case to review and monitor the situation so collections are of the standard they should be.”
Bins should be placed out by 6.30am on the day of collection, and should be collected between 7am and 7pm on Tuesdays, and the council says that if a collection crew encounters access issues, they will ‘make further attempts to collect that day.’