Brown bins have been left uncollected in Royston and the surrounding North Herts villages for more than a week – causing residents to brand the situation “unbelievable”.

Residents from across the district – who have paid the £40 charge for garden waste collection, or £35 discounted earlybird fee – have told the Crow that not only has their garden waste bin not been collected on time, they do not know not knowing when new contractor Urbaser will fulfil the service they pay for.

Sarah Wallace from Barley said her brown bin hasn’t been collected since Monday last week, and she has called North Herts District Council to complain three times.

She told the Crow: “It is pathetic, my seven-year-old daughter could have organised this better.

“Nobody at NHDC can tell me when the bin will be collected and I have no confidence in them.

“We live in a beautiful place, but there is a problem with fly-tipping around here – and with these bin issues going on there’s no incentive to recycle.

“I know its difficult being on the county border – it must be hard to manage, but the treatment of Royston and the villages by NHDC is unbelievable.”

North Herts district councillor Sam Collins said: “The situation really is a load of rubbish.

“The failure to collect bins has been blamed on ‘teething trouble’, but frankly it is not like the new contractor did not have adequate time to prepare for this.”

Councillor Michael Weeks, executive member for waste and recycling at NHDC, said: “Waste collection services went well under the new contract during the first week in the majority of the district. However, with new collection services starting on 14 May, there have been some issues in certain areas of North Herts with collections of brown garden waste bins and the food waste collection service.

“This is in part due to some data errors in our IT system and in part due to collection crews having to learn new collection routes.

NHDC officers and Urbaser staff are working hard to resolve these issues and are confident that they will be resolved shortly, enabling services to return to the normal collection schedule.

“In the meantime we apologise to residents for any inconvenience caused.”

Anyone who hasn’t had bins collected should report it at north-herts.gov.uk/home/waste-and-recycling/missed-bin-collections.