Rubbish service: Croydon Council wants to charge a £15 ‘admin fee’ when residents have to replace their wheelie bins – whether the council contractors have broken the bins or not
CROYDON IN CRISIS: New impacts of living in a bankrupt borough are emerging with every passing day. The latest is the ‘rationing’ of new wheelie bins for residents. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
£82k-£30k=…: Jason Perry, Croydon’s expensive but rubbish Mayor
Jason Perry, Croydon’s rubbish Mayor, plans to compound his 21% Council Tax increase over two years by a new “rationing” scheme for the borough’s wheelies, which from April will see residents charged £5 a time for new bins in an effort that will save the council… less than half the cost of his own annual Mayoral salary.
Perry is paid £82,000 per year for his role as the borough’s executive Mayor.
Among his latest wizard wheezes for dealing with Croydon’s £1.4billion toxic debt is an “admin fee” for handling residents’ requests for new bins, which he reckons will save the council a relatively piddling £30,000 per year.
How many refunds part-time Perry’s council might be forced to make for poor service has not been discussed publicly, which might be an oversight. The council’s own website confesses to a 12-week delay in providing replacement bins at present “due to the manufacturer experiencing an increase in demand following lockdown”. That’s the 2020 lockdown…
The reduction in provision of thousands of wheelie bins to Croydon residents each year has never been discussed in the Town Hall Chamber nor included in any council official’s report. “Given the existing back-log of orders, they probably don’t want to create a rush from residents trying to get replacement bins before the charges come in,” a Katharine Street source told Inside Croydon.
So we’ve sort of let Perry’s cat out of the bag. Whoops!
The council’s Labour opposition discovered Perry’s secret plan through a formal request to officials, who confirmed that since January 2024 there has been a “cap” of 2,500 new bins per month for the entire borough. This is down from around 4,000 bins per month, provided under a contract with Croydon’s rubbish contractors, Veolia.
Backlog: the council’s excuse for poor delivery of replacement bins dates back at least two years. Insiders say the real reason is ‘shit IT’ and ‘no real management of orders’
“The limit is 700 orders a week and 2,500 orders a month,” according to a written response, seen by Inside Croydon, from a junior council official.
“These numbers are in keeping with the service contract with the contractor.
“We do not currently charge for the replacement of bins; this will be reviewed once charging for this service is approved,” they said.
“This is service delivery to ensure we can provide the level of service to our residents. We were in receipt of over 4,000 orders a month which caused a backlog and complaints arising from residents for not meeting the expected delivery target.”
That’s the Croydon Council way: fail to meet demand, so cut back on the supply to compensate for what one Katharine Street source has described today as “a really shit IT system and no real management of orders”.
Nevertheless, 4,000 replacement bins required per month for a borough with around 150,000 households represent a higher rate than other local authorities, according to industry sources.
Under the contract with Veolia, to suit the contractors’ requirements and demands to help them drive down their costs of collecting residential waste and recycling, under a new deal in 2017 they undertook to replace all damaged or lost bins.
Under the £209million, eight-year agreement, new bins were rolled out across the borough, even to properties where it was neither appropriate nor necessary to have their 3ft 6in talls black plastic bins.
Whole neighbourhoods across Croydon, Sutton and Merton are now blighted by this “Binmageddon”, with pavements partly blocked off in areas where householders have no off-street storage area for the bins.
Binned: rubbish Veolia’s Croydon contract ends in 2025
Veolia have been sacked by Croydon and the three other councils in the South London Waste Partnership, following “significant and ongoing concerns” over their performance. This means that there is little or no incentive for Veolia’s management to exercise extra care over the way their staff manhandle residents’ bins between now and the end of their contract in 2025.
Typically, for a residential customer buying a 240-litre bin retail, they might expect it to cost £50 each.
But Perry’s council is not going to be charging the price of new bins.
The new £5 fee will be for “administration”, the cost of hiring staff and processing a few online forms. The charge is expected to be levied on small food waste bins as well as the larger waste and recycling wheelie bins. “I expect it will cost more to recover the fee than the charge itself,” our source said.
It might be a cheeky little earner for Perry, Croydon’s very own Del Boy parody: £5 a time for 30,000 replacement bins over a year could bring in £150,000 for the cash-strapped council. Oi! Oi!
The Labour group at Croydon Town Hall says that the £5 charge would often be unfair on residents. “Given that many requests [for replacement bins] are made because the council’s own contractor damages residents’ bins,” Croydon Labour tweeted, “how Croydon Tories can justify this decision is baffling.
“Presumably, that’s why the decision was taken in secret.”
Yet again, under Mayor Perry and council chief exec Katherine Kerswell, the residents of Croydon are paying more and getting less. Much less…
Read more: Croydon and three other boroughs to bin Veolia rubbish deal
Read more: Binmageddon: Veolia provides consistently rubbish service
Read more: Binmageddon: Veolia are ‘failing’ says ex-council leader
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
People will start nicking each others bins. This sounds like it could become a whole new set of problems.
My thoughts precisely. We’ll need to install trackers in them or start branding them.
This won’t end well when residents start fights over their bins ha
Respect to IC for avoiding the powerful temptation to make dreadful puns about this tragedy. I spent ages trying to think of a decent pun but they were all rubbish.
I feel your pain, but the contract only seems to allow them a few seconds per house. So, I have some sympathy
That’s, to use a technical phrase, bollocks.
The last renegotiation of the contract, in 2016-2017, saw the councils in the SLWP largely capitulate to Veolia’s demands, which mostly saw their tasks and workload reduced to enable them to reduce costs. Croydon was particularly accommodating.
So we had Binmageddon inflicted on the borough thanks to a “desk top study” of the streets, which found that all could accommodate large numbers of great big wheelie bins (far more convenient for Veolia to empty in their dust carts). We had more than 1,000 litter bins removed from the borough’s streets (so no one had to be employed to empty them… with the results strewn across the pavements everywhere you look), expensive and useless “Big Belly Bins”, reduced street sweeping schedules, and all under a contract for which there was no provision for extrenal monitoring of performance.
Have you never wondered why Croydon Council’s Crap App has no category for “missed bin collections”?
If Veolia try to do their rounds more speedily, it will be because Veolia has organised and costed its rounds to save itself the maximum amount of costs to maximise their corporate profits.
Croydon residents have been paying more and getting less.
Originally they were supposed to have had chips in purported to determine weight of rubbish and address and some other junk so they could fine peoplefor misues.
A bin man told that they DO have chips in, to allow them to be weighed and so on. But they haven’t been ‘switched on’. That’s probably because they would have a Human Rights Act crisis on their hands.
How about the recycling boxes or lids which tend to break over time just through use? Will he charge the same for those? I’m thinking that Perry may need to be binned himself in a couple of years….
Veolia wanted to get rid of the boxes altogether, replacing them with wheelies. Hence the vast increase in huge black wheelies blocking the borough’s pavements: easier for Veolia staff to lug to a dust cart, a bloody massive imposition on the borough’s pavements…
Some lucky residents clung on to their recycling boxes. But after seven years, our guess is that if you wanted a replacement box, the answer from Croydon Council will be “Compoota says ‘No!’.”
They made excellent veggie boxes
Forgive me for not fully following the saga, but if the Veolia contract ends in 2025, would Croydon then have the power to Bring Boxes Back? (I made it a simple 3 word slogan in case that helps)
Not a bad idea. You’d need to lobby a rubbish cabinet member to ensure that boxes are included in the new service contract.
Friend of mine kept his old boxes and they’ve been collected happily. ‘Course the bottles and cans versions aren’t capacious enough for the average IC reader …
Well one is spoiled for choice there!
Yeah, ours was one of the roads where we luckily managed to keep hold of our boxes. We showed that Veolia had screwed up their “survey” of the local area and that lots of properties had nowhere to store four bins (if you count garden waste). I still have the photo of the “bin tower” somewhere…..
Our bins often get broken lids. Still waiting on a new lid or bin now!
Don’t hold breath,
How many bins can we get for the salary of Mayor Perry? Can only improve decision making in Weatherill House.
Sadly none, he does not meet the standards for recycling!
I was issued new bins just for the dustman to take them back ridiculous and I needed those bins
Bins regularly lose their lids as they are handled week by week (or is that fortnight by fortnight). Other bins get left outside the wrong properties, Are we going to be ‘fined’ for Part-Time Perry’s lack of foresight?
it would help if the Veolia service people actually put the bins back where they take them from; but instead you end up having to walk up and down the road trying to find your bin where its been dumped by the waste collectors.
And that is why I just love IC Mike. Sometimes you feel you are living in cuckoo land and then you find that its not just you it happens to.
When one called this council a while ago about a missing bin they were advised to have a look along the road both ends. This was to a very disabled housebound person with an assisted collection.
When this was explained they were asked to ask a neighbour.
There seems to be a problem with the blue lid paper bins. An awful lot of them round here have missing or broken lids, they should be replaced.
I was looking up on the Council website about broken lids and boxes. You can’t just request a lid or box any longer even if only one of the components is damaged. You have to order a whole replacement and that’s after sending a picture of the damage. They obviously don’t want to make it easy….
Well, we reported a missing lid on one of our wheelie bins and they replaced it. Can’t fault it. Might have been a garden bin. PS: The waste disposal professionals at the town hall hate people referring to ‘wheelie bins’. So let’s all keep up the good work
Then you get sent the wrong bin. They take it back you eventually get the blue lid one but now find that the General rubbish bin is bust – order a new one only to find that – well you have already had one that year and it was delivered a few weeks ago.
Seems there is no method of removing data errors from the system. So if they make a mistake thats your lot.
Can’t seem to get any answer as to the reason – Human or Machine issue?
From Binmageddon to Bagmageddon
I will put it out there – I like my wheelie bins. But I have somewhere to store them and have always recycled or composted as much as I could.
They are really impractical for a semi detached house developed into 3 ”perfectly legal” flats, but I suppose paying £1,000+ to have beside your and your kids bedroom window and emergency egress, 9 wheelies and 3 food bins with bust lids. After all it is perfectly legal and in the best possible taste if not smell and it does allow the children to get up close and personal with the vermin wildlife!
Seriously did anyone think this latest council wheeze through?
The wheelie bins are Council property and are loaned. They do not belong to homeowners. They were given to homes so as to enable veolia to recycle better and easier among other reasons (or so we were led to believe).
So if they are damaged by binmen contracted by the Council – well it is their property so is not vandalism or criminal damage.
If it belonged to the resident and was their property, then it is either a petty crime or a civil crime and compensation/replacement sought along with costs against the culprit. But we do not own the bin and cant insure it either. (I asked) So most as I did went and bought another bin or just used bags.
At no stage has any resident I am aware of signed any documentation taking ownership or liability for any damage caused by binmen, their vehicle or passers by to Council/Contractor owned property. Why would we?
How many enforcements and fines in the last two years? Clearly from the black bag stack on St James road every day and other side roads, there must be already so many people without bins.
Perhaps I jest – they are really fly tipping or walk tipping or just dropping it out the window above and we have returned to Elizabethan times.
Perhaps again its just the total lack of any enforcement by this Mayor and his administration? Everyone already knows that Croydon is fly tip freedom dump anywhere and at will. No one cares and no one about to enforce – so an offence in name only.
With lots of takeaways and a growing fox and rat population, does environmental health have any comment on this? Silence?
Just looking at the volume of comment on this vexed topic it is clear that most iC readers think that the Mayor’s proposed new policy is just a load of rubbish.
We wouldn’t need replacement bins if:
A The contractors didn’t dump the wheels bins somewhere else from the place they found them and
B. The contractors did not throw the food waste bins high in the air and damaging them when they hit the road, pavement or drive.
Perry needs to stop those practices and save money
Yes. But then the round takes longer and as IC said less would be collected.
The reality we face in 2024 is that there are really only 7 – 10 waste and specialist waste companies in the UK to choose from. Veolia is the biggest.
Biffa, SUEZ, Viridor, FCC Environment, Grundon,Waste Management Inc. etc
Very few others could scale up to take over and maybe need substantial investment in assets first. I would be surprised if even those above would be capable of taking over seamlessly without a lot of planning and scaling prior.
Also this Council has a poor reputation in buiness – just think Bus adverts.
Councils may need to broaden their partnership to a minimum of eight to achieve good economies of scale and have co-ordinated environmental tasks with end to end process and assets capable of tasks from collection to recycling to incineration without toxic emissions.
Options moving forward should look at
1. Government passes the task to City hall
2. Sets up a non profit Public Company to focus solely on waste processing end to end.
Or Local Councils band together larger groups and do the same and determine to do this either in house or contract.
One thing the UK should consider. We have become a Sovereign nation politically after Brexit. What we have not become no matter what Zealot Conservatives and UKIP state is Independent. We are commercially deeply linked globally and the majority of our critical public services are run/owned by non uk companies. Many are also heavily in debt from poor management/asset stipping/dividends paid from adding debt.
Waste Management is just one area of this situation and deeply impacts on our borough. Water is another, as it Energy.
The one service that does not get a subsidy to operate in London and is UK AND Public is LUL as part of TfL.
Just look up all the Associated Train Companies operating in London and look at their subsidy paid by taxpayers. The look at who owns them. It is all public information and all publish their accounts.
Poking the Council is valuable and thats why IC is so good it works at keeping them honest. But the Council needs to open up and bring all the data into the public arena.
People are not stupid they see the wrongs and suspect they are being misled. Maybe for that sleazy euphemism of someones idea of ”the greater good” maybe true belief, But in this case it is all Rubbish and all about rubbish.
So to take my favorite northern saying Can Croydon achieve some Brass from this Muck?
They break the lids constantly, meaning you have to empty them of water all the time. Sadly they didn’t buy bins with replaceable lids, just feels like a rip off
Totally out of order. We are paying council tax for what!!
Will the charge be waived when the reason for the new bin request is that the lid was broken during collection, which is how we have needed our three in the last two years…