Over 3,300 reports of missed bin pickups in Antrim and Newtownabbey since new recycling system rolled out

Those are just the number of calls and e-mails received by the council; the number of actual missed households is likely much higher.

Two councillors said that the situation has since improved slightly this month, but that complaints are still coming in.

Bin collections in the borough are handled by the Bryson Group (both household waste and recycling), and the firm was plagued with problems around Christmastime with bad weather and a shortage of drivers.

But councillors had said that complaints had been growing ever since new recycling bins were introduced in October.

Now one reader from the borough has got in touch with the results of a Freedom of Information request he had submitted to the council, breaking down the number of reports of missed bin collections since then.

Across both bin types, the results were as follows:

October - 679;

November - 689;

December - 1,047;

January - 917.

The vast bulk of missed collections were recycling ones.

In all, there are just under 60,000 households in the borough.

DUP councillor for Antrim Paul Dunlop told the News Letter: "There's been an improvement, but there's still bins being missed."

He added that the improvement has been "slight", but that "it wasn't difficult to get an improvement from where they were".

Linda Clarke, another DUP councillor representing Dunsilly, the northern part of the borough, said she had been getting reports this week of bins missed in Randalstown.

"There’s been an improvement but they’re still not lifting all the bins,” she said.

Of the 3,300 reports of missed pick-ups, she said the number is “definitely not good” – but is likely an underestimate because “a lot of people just don’t bother reporting it”.

She knows of people who have phoned the council about it, only to be kept waiting 40 or 50 minutes before giving up without filing a report.

Things are “slightly” better now, and Bryson “apparently have recruited a lot more staff”, but still “they just can’t cope”.

At the end of last month, Bryson had told the News Letter: “While we have experienced some challenges with our collection service recently, the situation is improving week by week.

"We have a robust recruitment plan in place to ensure we have sufficient drivers to maintain frontline services, as well as additional capacity for contingency.

"We apologise to any residents who have experienced collection delays and would like to reassure them that we are doing everything possible to return services to normal as quickly as we can.”

The council said in a statement tonight: “The figures in the FoI response reflect the number of contacts received from residents by telephone and email, and may relate to multiple properties rather than individual missed collections.

"Our crews complete approximately 120,000 waste and recycling container collections each week, which equates to more than two million lifts between October and January.

"Set against that level of activity, the reported figures represent a very small proportion of overall collections.

"Service performance has further improved in recent weeks and current data indicates that approximately 99.5% of collections are now taking place on the scheduled day, reflecting the actions taken to stabilise and restore the service.”

There were also reports of widespread missed pick-ups by Bryson in Mid and East Antrim Borough Council and Lisburn and Castlereagh Borough Council last month.

Antrim and Newtownabbey's recycling contract with Bryson runs from May 2025 to May 2030, with an option to extend for up to a further 60 months.