Last year Ealing Council dealt with 54,470 reports

Missed rubbish collections reported to Ealing Council totalled over 54,000 last year - four and a half times higher than the previous year.

Final figures for April 2012 - April 2013 reveal that the service has improved from the start of the contract (8,591 reported complaints) to March (2,858).

However, over the last three months the missed collection report rate is still running three times higher that under the old service (2011/2012).

The figures below are numbers reported by residents - but the council say real figures are usually smaller after checks have been completed.

For example in January there were 5,845 reports but this was reduced to 1,706 of 'actual' missed collections.

This can be for a number of reasons such as crews arriving later in the day than expected by a resident; duplicate reports of misses for the same address and contamination of recycling.

Missed Collections Reported

Figures based on 95,000 households

Councillor Phil Taylor Conservative Environment and Transport spokesman says: “Not only are our streets visibly dirtier with Enterprise but they are missing way more collections too.  Over 50,000 in the first year of the contract.  Even after a year missed collections are still running three times ahead of where they were under the old contract.  It all means hassle for 3,000 households a month with no end in sight.  Meanwhile the council it seems would rather hide the facts than solve the problem.  ”

Cabinet member for Environment and Transport, Councillor Bassam Mahfouz has responded:

'' Mr Taylor is again showing he has more time on his hands than sense and I do hope that he is not deliberately misleading people by ignoring the inconvenient truth that were in the set of statistics shared with him, as he intentionally withheld them when contacting EalingToday.

'' We have been totally open and honest about the situation with Enterprise and the reality on the ground is that around 0.3 % of collections were missed across Ealing in April.

''The reality is that independent scoring of how clean our streets are (using National Indicator N195) shows that they are better then they ever were under the previous Tory administration – a very inconvenient truth.

''Clearly we are continuously striving to make the service better and Amey have now taken over the contract.  Both Cllr Julian Bell and I met with the Chief Executive and Managing Director within days of the take over and made clear the expectations of ourselves and of our residents across the borough and that is what we are working to achieve."

Enterprise PLC - who took over the multi-million pound contract from May Gurney has now been bought by major public services provider Amey.

An Amey spokesperson says: ''Amey places great importance on delivering excellent customer service to local communities. Following the integration of Enterprise into Amey we are looking at all the contracts within Enterprise’s portfolio, including the contract with Ealing Council, and working with our clients to explore where we are able to bring innovation and new ways of working to ensure we provide a high quality service to residents.”

9th May 2013