LETTER: Confusion over bin timetable

Our local personal collection details on the HDC website showed a blue top collection scheduled for Wednesday 24 December with the next one shown as Friday 9 January.

We were a little surprised therefore to notice that our neighbours had all put their blue topped bins out on the evening of 2 January in anticipation of a collection the next morning; we checked our personal collection details once again and no collection for 3 January was shown; we checked again by putting our opposite neighbours’ address into the online system and theirs did indeed show a collection on 3 January for blue topped bins (I have enclosed copies of the two schedules so that you can see that I was not mistaken, confused, suffering a senior moment etc). The blue topped bins were duly emptied the following morning.

I contacted the Hop Oast depot by email on 2 January asking how this anomaly could come about – so far (14 January) I have not had a reply to this email nor to a similar enquiry which I made through the HDC online website a few days later.

We do not subscribe to the brown top bin collection system and would hate to think that our apparent proposed exclusion from the blue topped bin collection of 3 January was related to this and was in some way a punishment for not paying the additional fee required.

It would be nice to know how this apparent glitch in what is usually a most efficient system came about (an IT problem no doubt!!) and even nicer if someone from Hop Oast or HDC had had the courtesy to reply to my enquiry.

PETER HILLMAN

Primrose Copse, Horsham

A spokesperson for Horsham District Council said: “Horsham District Council would like to apologise for any inaccuracies on the personalised collection calendar over the Christmas and New Year period.

“Due to a technical problem the additional blue-top bin collection was not displayed for some properties, and the council is sorry for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused to residents. This issue has now been rectified and all calendars now display the correct collection information.

“The festive period was a busy time for the recycling and waste department with over 40 per cent more waste collected than usual. The collection crews worked additional Saturdays to catch up and have ensured that collections are now back on track.

“No further changes to collections are expected until Christmas 2015 as the crews will be working over Easter as normal.”