One result of the snow that fell last month was the site of household waste bins left beside the road. By the time you read this, most of those bins should have been emptied, but questions remain on why they were left for so long.

We completely understand the argument that bins were not collected initially because snow and icy roads made it too dangerous for refuse workers.

But those dangerous conditions did not last for an entire month and it does not seem unreasonable for an extra collection to have been made when it was safe to do so.

Thousands of residents in West Oxfordshire, South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse last had certain kinds of waste collected four weeks ago.

In West Oxfordshire, the council originally asked householders to leave their bins out as crews tried to catch up. But it transpired that the attempts to catch up were restricted to one extra day’s collection. Those households that missed out were left in the dark and their bins remained, as instructed, on the street.

Householders had to go to the council’s website to discover that their household waste would not, in fact, be collected until the next scheduled collection which was due this week.

With both recycling and, most importantly, food waste still being collected weekly, the omission of one collection does not, on the whole, cause that many problems.

But next time, we would welcome better communication about what is being collected and when.