Bin complaints top table of calls made to West Lothian council

Bin complaints topped the table of calls to West Lothian council in the last year, councillors have heard.

Major changes to collections and opening times at the recycling centres prompted a surge in calls and emails to the council, the Corporate Policy and Resources PDSP heard.

After reaching a peak at the start of 2024 the numbers quickly fell away, an officer told the meeting suggesting the service changes were the cause.

Joe Murray, a project and systems manager with the council, outlined the annual complaint performance across the different services run by the council. His report pointed to an improvement in the numbers of complaints successfully closed.

He added: “The current service level complaint performance varies across the council and is linked to the complexity and quantity of complaints received.

“Housing, Customer and Building Services (HCBS) and Operational Services are the main complaint generators by service, accounting for 83.8% (3,637) of all recorded complaints (4,342) during 2024/25.

“The main contributors in Standard of Service complaints are Operational Services (1,776) and HCBS (517) which account for 85.4% (2,293) of all recorded complaints in the category.

“The equivalent quarters in 2023/24, HCBS (564) and Operational Services (1,520) had a combined total of 2,084 complaints categorised as Standard of Service.”

He added: “The decrease in Policy Related complaints have been driven by Operational Services (356) and HCBS (132) which account for 86.2% (488) of all recorded complaints in this category.

During 2023/24, Operational Services (440) and HCBS (162) had a combined total of 602 complaints categorised as Policy Related.”

Responding to a question from councillor Lynda Kenna, Mr Murray said: “There was a substantial increase in complaints around the changes in opening times of the CRC [recycling centre] sites. They have now fallen away.”

Mr Murray explained that quarter one of last year saw the introduction of brown bin charges. That brought a peak in complaints around the demand for bins and requests to uplift brown bins.

He told councillors “It can be said that there has been, in quarter three and four and continued into quarter one of this year there has been a fairly sizeable reduction in complaints to waste services over this period.

“ I think it’s fair to say that when we develop a service redesign it may, or can contribute to increasing complaints and the fact that waste services affect every household in West Lothian means service redesign may have a negative effect on customer perception of the service change.”

Complaints have climbed steadily over the last five years in areas such as waste services and Housing, Customer and Building Services. Councillor Pauline Orr asked if the council kept details of the complaint to be able to improve services.

“In some cases there are three times the number of complaints in the last five years. Do we keep data in respect of what the complaints actually are?”

Mr Murray advised that officers “ drilled down hard” into the data collected, and all service specific complaints contained details. “There is in depth reporting and detailed analysis that goes on that is reported quarterly.”