Our town's bin collectors do a wonderful job. But it has not been an easy year for Middlewich-based contractors ANSA Environmental Services, who collect waste in Congleton for Cheshire East Council.

While there will always been incidents of roads not having their bins collected for a myriad of reasons, 2021 has provided challenging circumstances.

COVID-cases, extreme weather and the HGV drivers shortage have all had an impact on how well they can do their job.

So with three bins per household to collect with limited resources in trying times, this has unfortunately led to hundreds of missed bin collections on Congleton streets.

A Congleton Nub News Freedom of Information request has revealed there were 428 incidents of streets having bins not being collected when they were supposed to in our town.

May had the joint-least missed bin collections with just 39 instances where a grey, black or green bin couldn't be collected on time.

But then next month saw the amount of times streets in Congleton didn't have their bins collected hit the triple figures.

There was 101 incidents of a failed bin collections on a Congleton street in June.

Remarkably, this went down back to May's figure of 39 for July.

But then increasing to 48 in August and 80 in September. The latter was when national media began to report on a 'HGV crisis' as did Congleton Nub News, with public discourse citing Brexit and COVID being cited as reasons.

However, Cheshire East then leant towards the pandemic as the reason for the shortfall.

There was another 48 missed household waste collections on Congleton streets in September, and 73 more in November 2021.

While the figures are up and down, and by no means out of the expected double figures, it appears the powers that be have got a grip on the issue after the peaks of June and September.

This once led to rubbish piling up on Congleton's streets, but this hopefully should be a thing of the past, with no indication so far this month that the Omicron variant will make staff shortages in waste collections any worse.

Congleton Nub News approached Cheshire East Council and ANSA for comment.

Judging from their response, it appears that staff from outside of our area have come in to help fix the problems, and help reduce the amount of incidents of waste piling up on Congleton streets from these missed collections.

Councillor Mick Warren, chair of Cheshire East Council's environment and communities committee, said: "Each day across Cheshire East our crews collect around 50,000 bins and, since the outbreak of the pandemic, have continued to work extremely hard to maintain our full waste collection services.

"However, despite all our efforts, we have faced increasing pressures on our ability to complete some collection rounds, and to return to collect bins that have been missed or that have not been collected as scheduled due to being unable to access a road because of factors including bad weather and road closures."

The Independent Councillor added: "We acknowledge that this has meant that some residents have not received the same level of service as usual, and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

"Unfortunately, until the situation eases, disruption may continue, and we would like to thank residents for their ongoing patience."

It is important to note that the 428 recorded incidents of local streets having missed bin collections is not a uniquely Congleton problem in these times.

However, it is great to report to our town that the powers that be claim to have a stronghold on the once-perceived crisis.

Congleton should consider itself lucky, as another town in Cheshire East saw double the amount of incidents.

Congleton's neighbouring town of Macclesfield saw 806 incidents in the same time period. However, Macc is over double the population of Congleton.

Macclesfield resident Cllr Warren added: "The challenges we are facing are not unique to Cheshire East and are due to the impact of a national shortage of HGV drivers and factors including covid-related staff sickness and self-isolation, together with an increase in the amount of waste produced by households."

"However, to try and reduce the impact on our residents, we are continuing to prioritise black bin collections and Ansa staff and colleagues from within other Ansa service areas are also being utilised, when available, to try and complete any outstanding work.

"We also have an ongoing programme for upskilling refuse loaders to drive HGVs and are currently waiting for more DVLA test slots to become available.

"Residents can keep up to date with information about bin collections by following @CheshireEast on Twitter or downloading the 'Waste Watchers' app on their mobile device.

"Further information about the job opportunities currently available with Ansa can be found at ansa.co.uk."

Despite the good news, it doesn't mean all delivery and collection services are back to normal.

We have been reporting on a Royal Mail crisis in Congleton for two months now.

Please click here to read that article.

Specific numbers of staff were not provided.

Please click here to learn more about Cheshire East's waste services in and around Congleton.

See also: Congleton: Here's when your bins will be collected this Christmas.

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