BARNSLEY Council are in the process of recruiting more waste collection staff to ensure scheduled collections remain on track - after thousands of bins were missed in the first few days of the year.

It was revealed at the start of January that due to a number of issues - including bank holidays and workers turning down voluntary overtime - that the blue cardboard bins would not be collected until the next scheduled date.

Many residents across the town were waiting until last week to have their cardboard collected - most of which they would have accrued over the Christmas period.

It follows on from last year’s bin chaos when there were more than 330,000 late collections in the first month of the year.

At last Thursday’s full council meeting, Coun Chris Wray asked if collections will take place as scheduled going forward.

Coun James Higginbottom, cabinet spokesperson for environment and highways, confirmed the council are in the process of hiring more staff to ensure similar incidents do not occur again.

He said: “I would like to reiterate my apologies for the disruption to blue bin collections that were scheduled for the first two weeks of January this year.

“This was caused by a temporary shortage of operational resources, and we fully recognise the inconvenience this caused for residents affected, myself included.

“The decision not to go back for two weeks’ worth of blue bins, however, enabled us to get all services back on track much more quickly than had we attempted to recover every missed bin.

“We are actively recruiting additional staff to stabilise the service and to ensure we are fully resourced ahead of garden waste collections recommencing on March 2.”

Coun Higginbottom added that the work collection crews do is difficult - and that they will monitor the service moving forward.

He added: “It is important to note that the daily deployment of approximately 30 to 40 waste collection crews who, in total, collect around 115,000 bins every week, is a highly complex operational task.

“Crews can be affected by a range of factors, including vehicle availability, staff absence, route delays, capacity pressures and the need to respond to unplanned operational issues.

“Any one of these can impact service delivery on a given day.

“However, with additional staffing now being brought into the service and ongoing operational improvements, we expect collections to proceed as scheduled going forward.

“We will continue to monitor service delivery performance closely and keep members and residents updated through our communications channels.”

In response, Coun Wray told the Chronicle: “We will always thank the hard work of council staff throughout any difficult period, as we always have.

“However, as the ruling party, Labour should accept responsibility and learn from issues in previous years, plan ahead for changes and foreseeable events like Christmas, because the public expect better.”