How Councils Deal With Complaints

Dustmen have refused to collect a full recycling bin from a couple's house because it was 'contaminated' by six food pips.

Which rather amazed the owner, who hadn’t eaten anything with pips in.

Melvyn Sylvester was amazed to discover his bin had been left untouched outside his home in Andover, Hampshire, at the weekend.

Binmen had left a sticker on it stating they could not accept the bin as it contained food and was therefore contaminated.

Mr Sylvester, 54, said the bin contained no food except for six small pips sitting on a pizza box.

Which anyone could have thrown in his bin, since it didn’t come with a padlock.

So, first the council tried lying:

Initially the council claimed the bin had not been emptied because it contained plastic carrier bags which were not recyclable.

But its own binmen had given the lie to that, by attaching a tag claiming that the reason was because it contained food.

Aha! Could that pizza box save them?

But it then stated the bin contained pizza - a claim Mr Sylvester denies.

'There was no pizza in the packet. It was empty,' he said.

So they finally came to empty his bin, and dismissed the whole matter by claiming that ‘procedures had been followed’.

A council spokesman said: 'The council would wish to emphasis that the collection crew followed guidance appropriately and left a bin tag indicating the reason that the bin had not been emptied on that occasion.'

If you follow the guidance, you’re golden, no matter what else you do…

She said the bin was emptied after it was confirmed it did not contain food.

And after you had wasted god knows how much of the taxpayer’s time and your own time trying to justify what your bin men did….

Wouldn’t it have been quicker just to take the damn thing away in the first place, since that’s what you ended up doing anyway?