Are you happy with your rubbish collections?

I read this letter in Bristol Evening Post. Reader Les Nicholls is really rattled about the state of the rubbish collection. Do you live in Thornbury and are you happy with your rubbish collection? I would love to hear from you.

Here is Les's letter:

SURELY one of the most basic needs of any household is to have our rubbish collected?

This is true not only because of the ridiculously high council tax we pay, but for community health reasons.

Yet on more than one occasion I have not had my rubbish collected when it was supposed to be.

The first time was because it was apparently "too heavy" for a presumably fit bin man to pull it to the back of a lorry, even though my eight- stone wife managed to pull it back up the drive.

More recently it just wasn't collected, even though all my neighbours' had been.

On phoning the correct department, we were told it would be collected in the next two days. This did not happen and on telephoning again we were told SITA had told them our bin was not out on the day for collection.

This was clearly untrue as my bin was next to two of my neighbours' and those were both collected. The fact SITA was lying was not considered, but the implication is that I was.

Since the bins are not collected every week, this would now mean our bin would not be collected for four weeks in what was a rarely very hot period in June. I did not think this was acceptable, but you have no recourse when this happens.

You can make a complaint, but we were told it would take a week for us to even get a reply.

Apparently no managers were available and one would call us in two days, (which they did not) so I had to take all my rubbish, which by this time had maggots crawling from it, to the tip, at a cost to myself financially and in time.

I pay more than £200 per month in council tax and having my rubbish collected is one of the very few benefits.

The Bristol City Council really needs to get its act together and look after the services we pay for. It is bad enough that rubbish is only collected twice a month, but I bet I am not the only person who has had this experience.

I posted a complaint via the council website and, of course, received no reply to that either.

Just what the so-called managers do at the council is a mystery to me, they sure aren't doing the job they are paid to do.

Les Nicholls.