A councillor has offered to compensate an elderly woman who says hasn’t had her bins collected in several weeks.

Cllr Tony Shields voted against Veolia taking over the borough’s bin service from Sutton Council on April 1.

However, at a recent committee meeting, Mr Shields offered to pay a woman named Miss Fuller her £61.50 garden waste service subscription fee back.

Mr Shields told Sutton Guardian: “As a borough councillor I have a duty to residents and it is entirely unfair that a council takes any payments from the public when their collected action is appalling.”

Mr Shields, who said he was ashamed of the missed bin collections, added: “A local councillor is someone who gets elected to do the best for those in his area. I’m not here to debate major polices like climate change. My job is to look after the standard stuff, to keep the streets and parks cleaned.

“Sutton Council is having great political debates but our streets are dirty. That’s why I’m concentrated on this. If I wanted to talk about national policies I would be going for parliament.”

According to the Conservative, it is “inevitable” that more people are going to start asking for compensation of their waste subscription.

Mr Shields continued: “I think we should either as a council address the problem and get it right from today or just break the contract with Veolia.

“We should be man enough to say we made a mistake because it’s appalling what’s happening.”

Sutton Guardian reported in August of unhappy residents who were receiving letters from the council demanding bin payments claimed to have been already made.
A Veolia spokesperson said: "The roll out of the recycling and waste collection services in Sutton are now very much business as usual with 98% of all routine collections being on schedule. To address the remaining 2% we have set up a project team to work with those affected and are working closely with residents to understand how we can best meet their needs. 

"We would like to thank local residents for their help and participation which has resulted in recycling increasing to over 50% whilst helping the Council achieve efficiency savings.”