COMPLAINTS about Oxford City Council’s waste and recycling department have almost trebled as anger grows over missed collections and charges for garden collections.

Some 3,142 complaints were made about refuse and recycling from April to September, compared to 1,116 in the same period last year.

And about 50 per cent of complaints were upheld this year, compared to about 40 per cent last year.

The council vowed to tackle missed collections – but said residents were sometimes to blame for putting bins out on the wrong day, time or place.

And they said the controversial introduction of a £35 charge for garden waste bin collections in May had also led to complaints. Householders previously got free sacks.

Mr John Tanner, executive board member for a cleaner, greener Oxford, said he did not know why collections were being missed but said: “This shouldn’t be happening.

“We should be emptying every bin and I am certainly going to be talking with managers about how we can bring down the number of complaints so we get it right the first time.

“In some cases it’s because somebody has forgot to put it out. But in most cases it’s because we have missed it in the first place.”

The Labour councillor insisted missed collections were picked up “straight away” but this cost the council.

Divinity Road, East Oxford, resident Elizabeth Mills, 60, hit out at binmen for not collecting waste put in the “wrong place”.

She said she had put her bin inside her front garden boundary the night before collection day to stop it being knocked over by ‘drunken students’.

But she said crews refused to collect it and she now has to get up at 6.30am to put it on the street.

She said: “I said to the chap ‘why hadn’t he taken my bin?’ and he said ‘it’s in your garden,it’s got to be on the pavement’ and he had been doing it out of the goodness of his heart.

“It’s an outrageous work to rule and the sooner they get encouraged to go back to behaving in a sensible and reasonable fashion the better.”

Liberal Democrat group leader Stephen Brown said: “I am very concerned about this and I am keen to find out what is going to be done to resolve the problem.”

Council spokesman Louisa Dean said: “This is for a six- month period and when you put it into context – we carry out 4,386,000 collections each year – that’s 0.07 per cent that are missed.

“The majority of complaints are for missed bins and there are a variety of reasons for that including not putting them out on time or putting them in the wrong place for the crews to collect.”

In October last year, residents were offered a blue bin to put all their recycling into, replacing blue and green recycling boxes.

The second most complained about department was Oxford City Homes, which provides social housing, with 238 complaints.

Some 71 per cent of these were upheld, the highest of all departments.