“Administrative failure” blamed for disrupted refuse service

Uttlesford Council’s chief executive has issued a statement on why bins aren’t being emptied currently.

“We are very sorry but there will be no refuse or garden waste collections again today (Thursday 25 January), as yesterday.

The delay is due to an administrative issue with has meant our operator’s licence has been revoked. It is a legal requirement to hold an operator’s licence and we are unable to collect this waste until the issue is resolved.

We continue to work with the Office of the Traffic Commissioner to rectify this as quickly as possible and will provide an update later today. We would like to reassure residents there has been no incident with the safety of our vehicles or their operation – this is an administrative failure, albeit obviously a very impactful and regrettable one.

We will provide information on our plan to catch up today’s missed collections, along with those missed yesterday (Wednesday 24 January), as soon as we are able – but you’ll appreciate that we can’t finalise this until we’ve sorted the underlying problem.  We are also exploring every practical alternative resolution or temporary fix.

There of course will be important lessons that need to be learned which I will ensure we do thoroughly, reporting transparently back to our elected Councillors with appropriate speed.  I hope though that you will understand that as a relatively small organisation we need to focus 100% of our capacity on resolving this issue. We are keeping the Cabinet Member for the Environment [Cllr Neil Reeve] and the Leader more closely briefed, and they are exercising ongoing oversight and firm, constructive challenge, so thank you in advance for not bombarding officers with detailed questions and demands for immediate explanations which risk reducing our capacity over the coming hours and days to solve the underlying problem itself.

Notwithstanding the conversations ahead about how we got into this situation, I would like to say how proud I am of and grateful to Ben Brown and other colleagues for seizing this challenge with energy, professionalism and dedication.

Once again, I would like to sincerely apologise for this situation. We do appreciate residents rely on our bin collection service and we are doing everything we can to ensure our vehicles get back out on the road as soon as possible.”

Peter Holt – Chief Executive

Uttlesford District Council