COUNCILLORS are to have showdown talks with officers over rubbish collections in Ceredigion.

Residents across the county voiced their anger over the festive period after several missed refuse collections due to staff sickness, wintry conditions and staff being pulled in to help deliver water following outages in December.

Following the angry comments from residents, Ceredigion County Council vowed to ‘increase resilience’ in the waste collection service across the county.

Now, councillors have been offered the chance to put their questions and views to council officers in a bid to improve rubbish collections.

Cllr Gwyn Wigley Evans who represents Llanrhystud and is chair of the Thriving Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which oversees waste collection, said: “Following the difficulties during this winter and the confrontations from the general public regarding the inadequate service offered in many parts of Ceredigion, the Thriving Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee decided to start an internal process and called a Task and Finish Group to identify points that have arisen in order to offer solutions for a more acceptable way forwards.

“All councillors were invited to bring together the evidence, some anecdotal, of the issues encountered.

“Council officers were not present to answer any points as they prioritised budget preparation pressures, however the group felt that a start was needed of a process and to be seen to be doing so, given the strength of opinion shown to individual councillors by the public.

“We are producing a document of facts and questions that need to be checked and answered by the officers across the council.

“Their answers will be presented to the members before the open scrutiny committee scheduled for 21 March, so that they can be checked and analysed before hand.

“During that meeting various problems will have been formally identified, as many have already, and changes can be discussed so that this situation does not repeat itself easily, although this is with a background of budget cuts making the solutions complicated but necessary.

“The councillors were very clear, they wanted the public to know we are not ignoring what happened, that any solutions need deep understanding and careful construction not short term reaction and this is what we are doing.”

Speaking following the disruption in December and January, which left some residents in various parts of the county, such as Clarach, Aberaeron, Aberarth and Llanilar, not seeing their bins collected over the festive period, Ceredigion County Council said: “When this level of disruption is experienced, due to the cumulative nature of waste generation, it does present a particular challenge to recover which can also take time to achieve due to the amount of waste being presented on subsequent weeks, and this was compounded by the proximity to the festive period and the additional volumes of waste generated at that time.

“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused and will aim to recover and collect all the waste as quickly as possible over the coming days, and is actively exploring options to increase the resilience of the service.”

Officers and councillors will hold talks on ways to improve the service during a meeting on 21 March.