#BINMAGEDDON: After five years of community campaigning, and following repeated broken promises from Fisher’s Folly, now the council says it has no idea where around 1,000 street bins have gone.
By our Town Hall correspondent, SANDRA STEAD
Rubbish service: the council spent £1.2m in 2016 on 88 Big Belly Bins, which have proved to be an expensive stunt that never really worked
“Totally inaccurate nonsense”.
A volunteer campaigner has criticised the data provided by Croydon Council in a Freedom of Information response supposedly providing the positioning of litter bins in the borough.
According to Tony Hooker, of the community group Litter Free Norbury, of 33 litter bin locations in his area that were provided by Croydon Council in response to the FoI, in 26 cases, there is no bin present.
That’s a 78% fail rate by our council. Or what Hooker called: “Totally inaccurate nonsense”.
Inside Croydon has reported before how the provision, or lack of provision, of litter bins on the borough’s streets has been a significant factor in our pavements and roads becoming increasingly strewn with litter.
In 2021, aided by official council figures provided in FoIs submitted by Hooker, we reported how 1,000 bins had been removed from Croydon’s streets since 2018.
Since then, requests to the council for information, an asset audit and an explanation for the vanishing bins, all went with only limited response. And now a senior executive at the council has admitted that promises, in 2023, to conduct an audit of the borough’s bins has all been binned – because council staff are too busy getting to grips with the latest waste deal with the borough’s rubbish contractors, Veolia.
It was Hooker’s painstaking research that discovered that, in his own neighbourhood between 2016 and 2020, every standard litter bin had mysteriously disappeared (the council offered no explanation), and that the area, including the half-mile stretch of Norbury high street, was now served by just five Big Belly Bins.
“This was a completely inadequate bin infrastructure,” Hooker said.
Bin deal: Veolia were sacked by Mayor Jason Perry in 2023 for poor performance, and they started a multi-million-pound eight-year contract in 2025
At the time, Croydon Council tried to claim that it had nothing to do with bins being removed. Nothing was done to have the bins replaced, either, even though it was within the existing deal with Veolia to do so.
Of course, the disappearance of 1,000 or more street bins was all done to reduce the amount of bin-emptying work done by Veolia.
A total of 88 solar-powered Big Belly Bins were installed around the borough in 2016 to 2017, “part of a £1.28million investment to keep streets cleaner and tidier”, according to an announcement at the time by Stuart Collins, the then Labour-run council’s cabinet member for streets and environment.
“The new bins compress waste allowing for a larger capacity and improved resources elsewhere,” Collins claimed at the time.
Collins proved to be just another Croydon mugging. This was just another expensive outlay by our council to reduce the work, and costs, of Veolia.
Croydon mugging: Stuart Collins accepted Veolia’s arguments in favour of Big Belly Bins
No one at the council had considered the obvious: that the technology might not always be reliable. The Big Belly Bins quickly proved to be an unreliable million-pound gamble. The council has since binned off the contract it had with a company that was supposed to maintain the borough-wide big belly bins in working order. Now, none of them work.
In 2020, Croydon gave Veolia a £22million contract “uplift” in order to improve the service provided.
There was no noticeable improvement.
In 2023, the council, now under Tory Mayor Jason Perry, sacked Veolia for a series of failures to deliver on their contract.
In 2025, Mayor Jason Perry’s entered into a new, eight-year contract worth £40million with… Veolia.
The result has been entirely predictable.
Getting hold of the metrics of Veolia’s new contract have proved impossible. But one measurable indicator of performance is out there on our streets: litter bins.
And Litter Free Norbury’s Hooker has found that several of the bins which managed to be reinstated or installed as a result of his campaigning since 2020 are now missing.
“Frankly, the council should be embarrassed at how bad this is,” Hooker said.
Aside from the £1.28million wasted on the Big Belly Bins, Hooker estimates that at least £250,000 of council assets were allowed to disappear without trace when the street bins were removed. And the council did nothing about it…
Bin-less: More than 60 street bins vanished from Norbury and its high street. Croydon Council claimed they knew nothing about it
“Norbury was the only place where all the usual street-side litter bins had been removed across the whole area, leaving only the big belly bins,” Hooker said, noting that the bins around Thornton Heath Pond and in Broad Green were also removed.
In July 2021, Hooker delivered a report to Steve Iles, the council director responsible, including maps and a petition signed by more than 60 businesses on Norbury high street.
Hooker never received a response.
Two years later, in August 2023, with Iles by now having left Croydon Council, Hooker took another senior council official on a walkabout of Norbury’s littered streets.
This exercise did, at least, yield a written response from the official, and an admission that their records were inadequate: “I would also like to note that the current database held by the council is out of date and needs to be fully audited across the borough. My intention is to commence this work with immediate effect.”
“With immediate effect”. Sounded promising.
In July 2024, Hooker was told by another council official that the borough-wide bin audit, which was due to begin “with immediate effect” 12 months earlier “is about to start”.
More than a month later, Hooker got another email from a council official. “I can confirm that the audit has not been completed as originally envisaged,” it said. Apparently, this work had now been “prioritised”. The bin audit was to be completed “no later than the end of October 2024”.
He did warn us: Mayor Perry’s warning soon after taking office is just about the truest thing he has said since 2022
October 2024 slipped into November 2024 by the time Hooker got the next update on the slow-motion audit of the council’s bins.
What was supposed to have been a borough-wide bin audit starting “with immediate effect” in July 2023 had now become a litter bin audit in Norbury, which “we are currently finalising”.
The council official wrote: “I will ensure that our findings correctly identify all absence [sic] litter bins which need replacing.” Which is nice.
Remember, Hooker, and the businesses of Norbury, had been chasing this matter for more than four years by this point.
In April this year, Karen Agbabiaka, the council’s director of streets and environment, wrote to Hooker, “In relation to the bin audit… the council went live with our new waste contract on April 1 2025 and as a result the team have been focusing on the mobilisation of that contract.
“So unfortunately, we have been unable to undertake the borough-wide bin audit.”
That’s the borough-wide bin audit which was supposed to have begun “with immediate effect” in July 2023, after the council admitted that their data was rubbish and needed a proper survey to look into how many bins had been removed from the borough’s streets to reduce the workload of rubbish contractors Veolia.
Binned the bin audit: Karen Agbabiaka has since quit Croydon Council
Now we have had it confirmed that the borough-wide audit was never done.
But to have it explained that this was not done because Veolia have been handed a juicy new contract is quite the development.
As Inside Croydon was first to report, Agbabiaka is among several directors to have left their council jobs in recent times, part of a constant churn which is clearly doing nothing for the efficient management of the cash-strapped council’s often over-stretched services. “Every time I attempt to contact someone at the council, they have either left, or on leave, or are on long-term sick,” Hooker said. “It’s getting beyond a joke.”
Hooker resumed his pursuit of the long-promised bin audit and some hoped-for replacement bins by writing to Agbabiaka’s replacement, an interim director called Tony Ralph. But even Ralph has now handed in his notice, and Hooker has never had even a courtesy acknowledgement from him.
“For Norbury, this work could be undertaken in a morning and documented in the afternoon – so it’s one day’s work,” Hooker said.
“Appropriately resourced, the audit of the entire borough could be undertaken within a month. But here we are, years later, and nothing has been done.
“In my entire working life if I had ever failed so miserably to deliver on such a relatively simple project such as this I would have expected to be fired. There appears to be zero accountability.”
Read more: #Binmageddon: 1,000 street bins have vanished from borough
Read more: Perry’s piles: Mayor’s video shows rubbish contractors are failing
Read more: #Binmageddon: Now Croydon named worst in UK for fly-tipping
Read more: You’ve bin done: council paying over the odds for solar bins
Read more: More churn at the top as interim directors leave the council
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Your piece makes interesting but sad reading. It omits one very pertinent piece of information – was the emptying of litter bins included in the new Veolia contract? If so, how many bins and how often? And, more to the point, what is the penalty for failing to work to the terms of the contract in this respect?
As is stated in the article, the council has yet to release the detail of the new Veolia contract, more than six months since it came into force.
Which means it is impossible to check what measures and performance indicators they are supposed to meet. Or the penalties.
Conveniently. For Veolia, but not for residents.
Until the Council release the details of the new contract, I can only inform you of my understanding of the previous contract, and I doubt it has changed so may be the same or very similar now.
It is unlikely to have a prescribed number of bins.
The number and placement of bins was at the discretion of the “authorised person” (a Council Officer).
Veolia will be required to empty bins, but not any set frequency, just to empty when, or before, they are full.
According to the previous contract the Veolia Service Charter stated:
“Litter bins are kept clean, well maintained and always available for use, never full or overflowing.”
Where they are reported, e.g. via Love Clean Streets, there will be a KPI, which may be something like a request to empty should be done within 2 hours in town/district centres. It will be longer elsewhere, e.g. Bus Stops away from centres.
This is my expectation, based on knowledge of the old contract.
As IC mentioned, the Council has so far refused to provide access to the contract info, so we’re all in the dark. You know, it’s almost as if they don’t want us to know what Veolia is meant to be delivering!
The Council’s Cabinet meeting of 24 September 2024 agreed that “the Corporate Director of Sustainable Communities, Regeneration and Economic Recovery in consultation with the Executive Mayor and Cabinet Member for Streets & Environment is authorised to agree the final contract.”
The Corporate Director was Nick Hibberd, who became CEO of Bristol Council on 6 January 2025. He was replaced by Nazeya Hussain, who has just left the Council.
It now appears that there isn’t a published contract for us to hold Veolia accountable for delivering its part of the bargain. Unless Perry or Roche can tell us otherwise…
Similarly, I have been campaigning for over a year to get the bins returned next to the shops on Holmbury Grove in Forestdale. These bins were taken away for cleaning when asbestos was dumped there, but they have never been returned. The explanation given by Council officers is that the current Conservative Councillors for the ward had made ‘no formal decision’ about getting the bins returned.
The return of the bins, along with the increase in litter and fly-tipping, are amongst the top issues raised with me by residents in the area. So why are the current Councillors not demanding the return of the bins and getting their Mayor to deliver the service that residents want and deserve?
I have had various spurious reasons given for the refusal to provide bins from one specific Council officer, including:
– “There’s no Litter, so I can’t justify to Veolia the need for additional bins”
– “Veolia won’t allow it because they can’t stop the van at the location”
– “Shopkeepers don’t want them”
– “We haven’t got the money to keep replacing bins”
– “Cllr X doesn’t agree to have a bin there, so I can’t do it.”
This officer I believe is the “Authorised Person” who can make the decisions about the location of bins.
The notion that Cllrs have to request and/or provide the sign-off on new/replacement bins seems ludicrous and I wouldn’t buy into that excuse for 1 second.
I’ve had similar excuses from Trevor Phillips nearly 20 years ago. Is he still recycling them while working for the Council (or is it Veolia) ?
Maybe the reason the council won’t give you the information you have the legal right to see is it would be very embarrassing for Part-time Perry and the Mayor’s pet, Scott Roche.
To borrow from the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, “no matter who you vote for, the Council always gets in”
Trevor Phillips was a good officer who cared. Occasionally grumpy, he always delivered. The Council let him go many years ago.
No litter in Croydon? Have they not visited the borough recently?
I am old enough to remember Perry campaigning on clearing up the streets and that picture of him (with Creatura) looking so pleased with themselves showing the flytipping that was occurring in South End under the previous Labour administration.
He has had long enough now to show improvement in waste collection and disposal, but the only thing he has delivered is a worse outcome. Judge Perry by his actions and results not his words. He has clearly failed and is inadequate.
“…what is the penalty for failing to work to the terms of the contract in this respect?”
As they have found in the past, Veolia know that if they don’t do any part of their shiny new contract, there will be no penalty. Their performance in 2020 was poor so they were bunged some more money to try and improve the service, but it didn’t get any better. In 2023 Veolia were sacked for dismal service standards, but the timescales of these contracts meant they didn’t leave immediately. In 2025, Veolia were re-appointed again on a new contract. So they know that they have got the hapless mugs at Croydon Council “over a barrel” and can do whatever they feel like with total impunity !
would love a bin of any kind on the junction of Bramley hill/ Tanfield Road.. may be those street drinkers who ignore that fact that the area is now a no drink zone,( although the signage is yet to go up) might actually put their rubbish in a bin…not holding my breath for the signage or bin.. but it is good to see the tree that was demolished by a speeding driver, has now been replaced.
A dedication to Croydon Council:
Your streets are completely full of trash,
Meanwhile your pockets are bulging full of cash.
You keep claiming that you’re are on our side
And all the while you’re taking us for a ride.
Please clean up your terrible mess
And make this better for all of us!
Have you thought about turning this into a poem? Just askin …
We won’t need bins when the Greens get in because shops will compost all their stale quinoia and waste
If anyone comes canvassing at my address before the Council elections in May, I will give them my email address to pass to their candidate and request sight of the Veolia contract. We really need these political charlatans to answer our questions. Mayor Perry is keen enough to do press and TV interviews, but he clams up when Veolia are mentioned. I cannot understand his loyalty to Veolia and would like him to explain how they manage to get away with such poor service. Is the Council’s Solicitor out there anywhere? Or does he/she not speak to mere mortals, either?
Come the Green revolution, you’ll be first on the heap
I really shouldn’t have laughed at this, but I did. It made me think of Soylent Green!
I’ve been there
The problems with those bins in the photo is that they cannot support such a large footfall area and require frequent emptying. Touching the handles are gross too and the pedals are always jammed. The Netherlands has solved this with underground bins and have no such issues
The bins in the Netherlands are only partly underground and they also fill up. The real issue is that people fill them with household rubbish (Fly Tip) and dont take rubbish home with them. Whats the country that has no public bins and no rubbish on streets. Humans are the issue.
We have a similar system in my home town in Tuscany. Each station has four partly underground bins (food, plastic, glass and non recyclable items). People were supposed to use cards to open them but the cards seldom work so everybody can use them even if not living in the locality. The pedals work, however.
If regularly emptied, it is a great system but sometimes they are not and it looks messy. The station by the Comune (Town Hall) is very visible and clean.
I tried to propose a similar scheme to Councillor Collins many years ago. Nobody listened.
Personally I would prefer a Council that works for the people and tells Veolia what to do, rather than the other way round. Where are all our bins? Croydon’s bin going mad!
I requsted for two street bins at Courtwood Lane either side of The Green Bus stops.
Because of no bins, I see empty bottles and cas some food waste in black bags left around one resident told me mice have been seen.
No bins yet been provided.
I wonder if we had 50,000 bins in Croydon if some people would still not dump rubbish wherever they find it convenient for them because they are too lazy to seek out a bin.
I see bins not overflowing with rubbish at the side of them and litter on the streets.