Croydon residents disgusted at no bin collection for nine weeks
BY TARA O’CONNOR
toby@slpmedia.co.uk
Rats and an unbearable stench are making life a misery for the residents of one block of flats in Croydon.
Some of the communal rubbish bins at Purvis House in Cromwell Road have not been collected for nine weeks.
And residents of the block of flats have had no luck getting the council to come and collect them.
Mary MacLennan, 68, has lived in Purvis House for two years.
Her husband, Bill, is chairman of the building’s residents association and she thinks the stress of the situation has contributed to him ending up in hospital.
Mrs MacLennan said: “At eight weeks they took a couple of the bins away but not the rest. There are rats now and it smells terrible, when you open the windows you get a nice whiff.
“My husband has been phoning the council and I got as far as calling the mayor’s office, but nothing has been done.
“Bill went into hospital with a liver complaint, and now he’s found out he had an ulcer.
“They asked if he had been under any stress and this is the only stress I can think of.
Because he is chairman of the building’s residents association a lot of people have been asking him when the bins will be collected.”
She said one of the bins has a broken wheel but as it is on one of the large communal bins, nobody living there can repair it as the bins are so heavy.
Neighbour Betty Wells has lived at Purvis House for 15 years. The 78-year-old said: “I use a chute to put my rubbish in and the smell has been atrocious.
“We’ve had to buy masks for when we put the rubbish out. We need the council to get this rubbish thing sorted.”
As well as rats, residents say that the overflowing bins are attracting foxes to the area.
A Croydon council spokesman said: “We regret to hear of the issues our residents have had with missed collections.
“These were caused by a broken bin that will be repaired as soon as possible.
“The best way to report missed collections is through My Account on
our website.
Missed collections reported via the online page at https://my.croydon.gov.uk/User/Login will be collected the next day.”
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This is nothing, I live in a small block of 6 flats. From 2013 to end of 2017 bins were collected with no issue. Then from Jan 2018 things changed. Since then we’ve had 25+ missed collections. I have reported this many times on my Croydon website, and nothing changes. Reported it to level 2 complaints team in Croydon in July 2018, and nothing changes. Matter is now with Ombudsman. The complaints team offered some compensation to pay for external cleaning, so apply for that. Croydon council is a disgrace, totally inept and don’t care about their residents who pay comparatively high council tax.
Worst thing croydon ever did was to outsource virtually every service