West Dunbartonshire councillor apologises for festive bin collections chaos

By Bill Heaney

A senior Labour councillor has apologised for yet another major blunder by West Dunbartonshire Council foolishly deciding at a secret meeting to take for granted its GMB trade union members by presuming they would volunteer to carry out festive bin collections.

With Labour still smarting from its decisions not to pay the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and or scrap the two-child benefit cap plus letting down the WASPI women, Councillor David McBride was made to eat humble pie instead of Christmas pudding.

He was shamed into saying sorry for the “systematic failure” within the Church Street-based local authority in regard to them being forced to abandon their widely publicised plans for festive bin collections.

And particularly for blaming the GMB bin men for the cock-up when the truth was that responsibility for it lay squarely with the members and officials of the basket case council and caused so much public opprobrium to be heaped on it.

Angry that the GMB workers had not simply fallen in behind their wishes, West Dunbartonshire Council got ahead of themselves and announced it had pushed back its bin collection schedule with no consultation with the union and the public.

This caused anger and dismay amongst thousands of residents who will now be forced to wait an extra two weeks for their bins to be emptied. It has been estimated some will have to wait double that time.

Council spin doctors failed to cover up the actuality of what happened by their use of convoluted language such as “workforce resource challenges” instead of plain English.

Embarrassingly, they had already attached their incorrect festive schedule details to people’s bins, which was a complete waste of time and public money.

They should have kept it simple and told the truth that they failed to convince workers to ‘volunteer’ to work overtime between Christmas and New Year.

Labour Councillor David McBride, the council’s convener of and spokesperson for Infrastructure, Regeneration & Economic Development, said the last-minute announcement was due to the results of a union ballot, which saw the majority of members who voted deciding against volunteering to work on public holidays.

He said he has now asked the Chief Officer to bring forward alternative solutions so the situation doesn’t happen again, which will cost more public money.

He said: “The provision of our refuse service has always relied on the voluntary overtime to cover the gaps during public holidays and my understanding is that those volunteers receive overtime payments, public holiday payments and they also receive a re-rostered public holiday day in lieu of working the public holiday.

“We have always been very appreciative of those staff who volunteer to work on a public holiday to ensure that we can continue to deliver a quality service to local residents during holiday periods.

West Dunbartonshire Council had already placed tags on residents' bins advising of the uplift dates before scrapping festive collections — **West Dunbartonshire Council had already placed tags on residents’ bins advising of the uplift dates before scrapping festive collections**

“Unfortunately, the trades unions balloted their members and the majority agreed that they will no longer volunteer to work on public holidays. I recognise this was also a really difficult decision for those who usually volunteer as they will have lost out on hundreds of pounds of additional payments, which many households rely on over the festive period.”

Cllr McBride said that Gail Macfarlane, the council’s chief officer for Roads and Neighbourhoods Services, was aware of the result of the trade union ballot and informed the leader and deputy leader that the timing meant that she had no option but to make changes to the planned bin collections as the notification came too late to be able to provide cover over the festive period as there were no volunteers to provide the service.

He added: “As this is an operational issue, the Chief Officer of Roads and Neighbourhoods Services [Gail Macfarlane] developed a plan to adjust the services and she also produced a communications message that would be shared to residents.

“The leader of the council [Martin Rooney] and the deputy leader were given sight of the communications which were completed on Thursday, December 19 at around 8.30am detailing the required changes.

“I fully appreciate the level of disruption that this has caused for a large number of households over the festive period and I apologise for any inconvenience that has been caused. I too will be personally affected by the change to planned service.

Councillor David McBride

“However, it is clear that we have a systematic failure and that we can no longer rely on voluntary overtime for service provision. Therefore, I have asked the Chief Officer to bring forward alternative.”

Top of page picture: West Dunbartonshire resideents can expect scenes like these because some bins will not be collected for up to four weeks. PIcture by Bill Heaney