Three-month wait for new bins 'not good enough'

It is "not good enough" that some people are being told to wait for up to three months for a replacement bin, a senior council official has admitted.

Coventry City Council said it planned to upgrade its systems to get on top of the issue, after councillor Barbara Mosterman queried why the standard delivery time for a new bin was so long.

Cabinet member for city services Patricia Hetherton said the three-month period represented a maximum timeframe for delivery rather than the standard or expected delivery time.

"In most cases, waste bins are delivered sooner," she said.

Hetherton added: "However, this timeframe allows for periods of increased demand, stock availability issues, supplier lead-in times, and the scheduling of deliveries across the city."

"The council continues to monitor delivery performance and works to ensure bins are provided to residents as quickly as practicably possible."

She said the average delivery time was not recorded but that options for a new system may improve how information was recorded, monitored and reported in the future.

The authority has already been criticised for being months behind a government deadline of 31 March to roll out its new food waste collection service.

Mosterman asked when a system to track bin delivery times would be implemented and what assurances could be given to residents in the meantime.

A more accurate timeframe should be provided, she said.

"There's only a few councils that don't charge for replacing bins and we are one of them," Hetherton said.

"But yes, we sometimes tell people it's going to be about three months. That's not good enough. We know that."

In the year from June 2025 to May 2026, the authority handled almost 11,000 requests from Coventry residents to replace bins that were damaged, broken or missing.

More than 4,700 of the requests related to green bins, just over 4,300 to blue bins, and the other 1,800 to brown bins.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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