Ninety-eight per cent of bin collections across Birmingham are being completed on time, according to a council chief.
And he says that the introduction of a new system will mean savings for the council - but that they will still need to pump an extra £2.5 million into the refuse service next year.
Speaking in front of the Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee last week Rob James, acting director of the refuse services, said that he accepts that performance has not been good enough in recent weeks, with the service moving from a four day operating model to five days.
But he says that, despite complaints by residents across the city of missed collections, the service is actually making most of its collections.
"There has been a major change in this service recently," Mr James said.
"Has performance been good? No, it hasn’t been where I wanted it to be. It’s dipped, we always expected a dip, but we have implemented something that has the full support of the Trade Unions and, I would say, the majority of the workforce.
"Where are we on performance? Well, at the minute, what we are achieving is somewhere around 98 per cent of collections that we should be making. That’s overall in terms of residual waste, green waste and recycling.
"As I say that’s not where I want to be. However if you look at that in terms of what has been missed, and you compare that to previous years, and indeed nationally, we are currently at around 74 missed collections out of 100,000. The national average is somewhere around 83, and our target is to get that down to 52.
"Have we got it right? No, not yet. Am I convinced that we will move forward? Yes I am."
However, Mr James' figures were challenged by councillors present at the meeting, who spoke about complaints they have had from constituents in recent weeks.
“If you take Aston, collections have not been done in some areas for three weeks," said Cllr Muhammad Afzal (Aston).
"In Broadway, which is a long street, both ends were collected but the middle was not collected for three to four weeks. Other roads have not been collected for two weeks.
"I could keep on going, but the question is, all these collections you quote, 74 out of 100,000 or whatever, I don’t know from where that statistic has come from. But it looks like Aston is the only one that is not collected, and all of your missed collections are based in Aston.
"I think there’s a need to check these statistics because I personally am getting fed up, and so much so that I’ve been sent an email saying that I should resign, as I've failed to deliver what I promised at election time."
His was a sentiment echoed by Cllr Sir Albert Bore (Ladywood), who said that the criticism received by councillors in recent weeks over missed bin collections is some of the harshest he has seen.
“I think the problem we have is many members can tell you the same story," Cllr Bore told Mr James.
"I can tell you that same story, that Afzal’s given for Aston, for Ladywood.
"And it has been so bad, over a period of time, where you had no collections for three or four weeks. And that's in all tenures, normal street patterns, maisonettes, and tower blocks.
"And I think members have just been exposed to a huge barrage of criticism from residents associations.
"I’m not surprised that these points keep getting made, because we hear that there’s a new model in place, we understand the new model takes time to bed in. But some of the problems that have been brought to the attention of members are so bad that they are beginning to doubt that the improvement that you keep talking about is actually going to happen.
"This for members has been a really bad period, because there hasn’t been the sort of criticism as extensive as we’ve had in the last few weeks for a long long time now."
For the past few years Birmingham's refuse service has been running over budget, with an average of around £3 million per year extra spent on the service.
This year refuse is set to cost the council an extra £3.6 million, though a new operating model implemented by council bosses in recent months could bring this figure down, Mr James said.
Under the new model employees will revert back to a five day week from the four day week implemented last summer, while the new system also does away with the potential for costly overtime.
But even with the savings from this new model, which will cut an estimated £1.8 million from the budget, more money needs to be put into the service to prevent an overspend, said Mr James.
"The budget that was set in February 2018 was insufficient to carry on with the four day working week and the previous operating model," he said.
"Therefore the £1.8 million you see as an overspend is an overspend on the current budget. If we had not implemented the new operating model that would have equated to £3.6 million overspend on the budget that we’ve got for this financial year.
"The budget for this year is insufficient for the service going forward. And there is a proposal in next year’s budget to uplift and invest into this service of £2.5 million.
"Therefore the structural underfunding of the budget needs to be addressed in this financial year and next. What I would say is that a £2.5 million uplift represents a saving on if we had continued with the previous model.
"The previous model would cost us £3.6 million plus from the current budget. Because that’s what we’re overspending. I say plus because the previous model allowed for an amount of overtime to be worked because the model didn’t perform efficiently. This model of a five day working week has resulted in no overtime being given to the waste collection service."
The refuse service has come under intense scrutiny over the past 18 months, with last year's bin strike leading to a complete overhaul of the operating model.
However, speaking at the meeting, Cllr Ewan Mackey (Sutton Roughley) said that increasing the service's budget was not what he had anticipated, adding that it caused him concern going forward.
"If I’ve got you right you’re saying we’re going to overspend £3.6 million this year and next year it’ll be £1.8 million," he said.
"Which is a bit like saying as a football team ‘we might have been beaten 5-0 last week but hell’s bells we turned it around and we only got beat 3-0 this week'.
"And that’s great in one way, but it’s not really what we want to be hearing. We want to be hearing that you’re dragging it back, and I’m actually starting to panic about next year now, to be honest."
