RED-faced Thurrock Council has had to admit yet another bins collection blunder – and will be sending a team out to collect residents' blue bins after they were mistakenly ignored.

Last week the blue recycling bin route that centres on Wharf Road in Stanford-le-Hope and includes adjoining roads was missed on its scheduled collection day – Tuesday.

Residents began to complain on social media and reported the error directly to the council.

The council, however, initially denied there was a problem and when Thurrock Nub News took up the causes our representations on behalf of residents were rebuffed.

Our initial enquiries were met with a denial that there was a problem and we were told, quite specifically: "All of last Monday's (19 June) recycling collections were completed, aside from one road in Corringham which was blocked."

Which was slightly problematical as the scheduled collection day was Tuesday, 20 June!

We continued to press the matter and today (Tuesday, 27 June), after more messages from Nub News to the council, showing pictures of the uncollected bins, the council conceded it had messed up and blamed 'human error'.

It said a wagon will be dispatched this week to empty the blue bins and asked residents to leave them out.

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The full statement says: "Thank-you for bringing this to our attention. Human error meant that homes in Wharf Road did not get the recycling collection they should have last week and the issue was not recorded on our system so crews did not return to get the missed bins.

"We can only apologise to residents in Wharf Road and promise that we will do better in the future."

An additional recycling collection will take place this week so we would ask residents to leave their blue recycling bins out for collection.