Council urged to act on 'gone to pot' bins

A council is facing calls to take action over waste collections after Margate residents complained about overflowing bins.

On Thursday Thanet District Council will debate incomplete household waste collections and overflowing public bins.

Residents have complained of missed collections and rubbish piling up since changes to the recycling system for thousands of properties.

The council said it had "made further changes" to waste rounds and was "working on additional measures to help to get operations back to where they need to be".

Homes in the district have been changed to weekly food waste collections, with mixed recycling and general waste collections alternating each week.

The changes were implemented after government rules required councils to collect certain recyclable waste, including food waste, from 31 March.

But resident Dan Todd said the collections had "gone to pot every other week".

"I live in a household of six, so you can imagine one bin for six people."

Todd told BBC Radio Kent sometimes had to "jump in" the bin "to fit an extra bin bag in it" from his household of six.

Former waste collector Mike Smith says the full bins "look terrible" but are "not the loader's fault. It's the management, it starts at the top".

He said he used to receive "horrible" abuse from dissatisfied residents but that "you just crack on with it".

A BBC investigation in 2025 found hundreds of cases of verbal abuse recorded by councils across south-east England.

Residents told the BBC of issues with public bin collections too.

Jack Shepherd, who works at an amusement arcade in Margate, said during busy weekends public bins on the seafront "end up with bin bags all around them".

"I hear people walking past saying it's not a great impression, the amount of litter," he said.

Resident Luke Armitage said Margate "comes alive" at the weekend but "the bins that we have are not sufficient to deal with all the excess litter, bottles, cans, tins".

A bin near his home "cannot cope" and becomes "a bit of a mound of rubbish on the floor", he says.

Councillors will vote on Thursday on whether a committee should investigate waste collection performance and commission a report on improving the service.

The proposed motion, put forward by councillor George Kup, "notes the increasing concerns being raised" as well as "operational and financial pressures facing local government services".

It also would recognise "the exceptional hard work undertaken under difficult circumstances" by waste workers and "intends no criticism of their efforts".

Thanet District Council has attributed the issues to the change in collections but said this had led to "more household waste being presented as recycling".

It said additional resources had been put into beach cleansing and the council was "committed to resolving this matter as quickly as we can".

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