Complaints to Mid Devon Council up 44 per cent

But claims that bin-collection concerns are reducing

Residents in Mid Devon are starting to complain less to the council, following a spike caused by changes to household waste collections.

Mid Devon’s Bin-It 123 scheme, which began in October last year, moved residents onto three-weekly rubbish collections, leading to a rise in complaints.

Data from Mid Devon District Council shows a 44 per cent increase in all complaints in the year to 31 October 2023, hitting 550 compared to 383 for the same period the year before.

Refuse-related complaints more than doubled to 74, a figure which only lagged housing tenancy (128) and housing repairs (130) across the 49 categories the council collates complaints under.

Addressing Mid Devon District Council’s scrutiny committee this week, Lisa Lewis, corporate manager for digital transformation and customer engagement, said the Bin-It 123 scheme was a “significant change for residents and staff.

“Given that, you would expect some bedding in of the new process, with some teething problems, but upon monitoring it, while there was an increase in complaints in the first six months, those numbers have gone back to where they were prior to the rollout of the scheme.”

She added that given the council’s millions of refuse and recycling collections each year, complaints appeared to be low.

The Bin-It 123 scheme aims to help improve household recycling and reduce  non-recyclable waste the council collects.

Ms Lewis added that an online self-service feedback portal had launched, so people had greater visibility about the progress of their complaint.

Just 12 complaints were escalated to the Local Government Ombudsman,  which occurs when a complainant feels their issue hasn’t been resolved. However, just one of the complaints was upheld.

Elsewhere, Ms Lewis said changes to the way housing complaints were monitored and managed had partly attributed to them rising.

The changes were largely down to new laws passed in response to the Grenfell Tower disaster in London in 2017.

The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 overhauled the way in which the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) and the Housing Ombudsman work so tenants’ views are heard, and led to new standards that social housing landlords must meet.

Mid Devon manages roughly 3,000 homes across the district.