Residents were left confused and anxious after a North Swindon councillor took to Facebook and warned of problems with Swindon Borough Council's new waste and recycling scheme.
Cllr Daniel Adams
The new initiative, which will be rolled out to the majority of households from the week commencing 27 November, uses new weighted blue bags designed to hold both plastic and tinned recycling.
Each household is currently only being issued with one bag. According to the council's website a second weighted bag will be available for each household, free of charge, and can be collected from local libraries.
However, in a post on a local Facebook community page, Cllr Daniel Adams (Con, St Andrews) said that he and other local councillors had been disappointed to find that the North Swindon Library was unable to hand out extra blue bags despite previously announcing that extra bags could be collected from Monday.
He went on to explain that he foresaw problems with the lack of extra bags issued to each Library.
Cllr Adams said: “There has been no system put in place to monitor who has received additional bags and indeed how many could be handed out per resident.
"I am astonished that only 100 bags have been allotted to each of the five core libraries. The situation simply isn’t good enough.
“We have contacted the cabinet member responsible as well as the head of waste services. We are seeking an explanation for the shoddy implementation of this and requesting more bags are made available to residents as a priority.”
The post drew more than 100 comments from local people, many of whom said they had yet to receive their blue bag also raised concerns over the scheme.
One said: “We’re a family of six, no way will we cope with one bag. Also don’t see why we should pay for extra bins for surplus when they decided to give such tiny bags. No way I can get to the Library either due to working hours.”
The following day Green Party parish councillor Bradley Williams reassured members of the public that there was not a shortage of blue bags after seeking clarification from the borough's head of end to end waste services.
He reported that the official told him: “To alleviate your concerns, I can confirm that I have given no instruction to stop distribution of bags. I will investigate your report with the libraries management but we are expecting them to be provided as planned from today. As with any roll out such as this, there may be some teething issues as we ask library staff to do what is an unusual activity for them but I’m sure that was an exception rather than the rule.
“In terms of the number of reusable bags we have available, I’m not sure where the number of 500 bags has come from. We have a significant stock of bags on site at waterside and will provide extra bags to libraries as they require them."
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