Residents in south Reading were left without bins for four months until an intervention from the Chronicle.
Reading Borough Council (RBC) said an external contractor took away the bins from families living in four apartments in February and was supposed to replace them the same day.
Bin bags were collected for the first few weeks after the bins were removed but then the council stopped collecting them in March because of the lack of bins.
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Ingrid Doctrove, one of the residents in the four-flat building on Northumberland Avenue, said the council told her it would take 10 weeks to deliver new bins for the four flats.
Even with this astonishingly lengthy timetable for replacing the four bins, residents had not received new bins more than four months later when Ms Doctrove called The Reading Chronicle office to complain on Friday June, 18.
Speaking to the Chronicle the following Monday, she said: “It is bang out of order.
“Every week I ring them and they say they will sort it out. I don’t know what else I can do.
“We have got about 10 bags or so. I just take my rubbish to work because I have a small amount because I live on my own.
“Sometimes I feel like taking the whole thing and dumping it outside the council.
“Something has got to be done. I am so angry. That is part of our council tax.”
The Chronicle contacted the council the same day (Monday, June 21) to find out what had happened.
Two days later, on Wednesday, June 23, Ms Doctrove told us the council had sent the bins that morning.
Thanking the Chronicle for its intervention, she added: “They need to be shamed. It was getting beyond a joke.”
The council has blamed the issue on an external contractor.
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A spokesman for RBC said: “The council received an enquiry from residents about missing bins and has now delivered bins to these properties in response to that enquiry.
“Our service agreement with the external contractor who removed the old bins required them to deliver the new bins on the same day.
“We apologise for the inconvenience to residents caused by the contractor not replacing the bins.
“We will be carrying out an investigation into why this happened and will ensure the waste is collected as planned in future.”
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