The national recruitment crisis is hitting the local authority across all sectors, but it is the front facing service areas, such as the weekly waste and recycling collections, which are most noticeable for our residents.
For some time, as a local authority, we have been struggling to recruit staff and cover absences due to illness and continued cases of covid 19.
The depots have been working hard with our recruitment team to have a rolling recruitment programme running for a number of months which includes advertising on local web-based media outlets, utilising social media and using posters in the local communities to advertise the vacancies. Furthermore, we have made several of our agency staff permanent, utilised highways crews when we can and given our current staff the opportunity to upskill and train as HGV drivers, but all this takes time.
In the meantime, our crews have been working very hard to collect the waste and recycling from residents through working additional hours, catching up on rounds and collecting extra recycling where weeks have been missed. They have had to be adaptable in the extreme heat and have gone above and beyond to keep the collections going.
Cllr Jackie Charlton, Cabinet Member for a Greener Powys, says “We make every effort to get our workforce up to full capacity. However, the struggle to provide a normal waste and recycling collection service across the county will continue to be a challenge in the short term.
“Please continue to put your bins and boxes out for collection on the normal collection day. If a collection cannot be completed, we ask that black wheeled bins remain out (we will be back to empty asap), but recycling boxes are taken back in again for another week. If you have not received a collection by 5pm, please check online for details of when we will be returning to collect.
“All our staff continue to do their best to ensure that recycling boxes do not go longer than a fortnight without being emptied, and additional separated recycling left in bags alongside the boxes will be accepted.
“Please be assured that we are giving this our full attention and hope that things settle down and we can resume our normal service soon. We would like to thank the people of Powys for their patience during these challenging times.”
