THE city council is getting much better at recording complaints and acting on them. The figures for complaints about refuse (Oxford Mail, December 5) actually show a slight fall since last year.

I’m very pleased that more than 99 per cent of bins are emptied on time but it should be even better. We will be discussing with managers, crews and the public to see how we can improve the refuse service.

When Labour won a majority on the city council we introduced the all-in blue wheelie bins for recycling and the weekly food waste collection.

But any new system takes time to settle down.

I’m as angry as everyone else about having to charge £35 a year to collect garden waste but, when our government grant is cut by a quarter over two years, something has to give.

For the record, we ask the public to put their bins out on collection day at the very edge of their property. Unless it is unavoidable, we don’t want bins causing obstruction on the pavement.

I’m also thrilled that the city council is investing £665,000 for solar panels on five prominent buildings in Oxford. I hope we get the full feed-in tariff rate. If we don’t, it will be entirely the fault of the coalition Government for changing the rules with hardly any notice.

The latest figures for the whole city of Oxford suggest our carbon footprint has shrunk by 14 per cent since 2005. In October, Oxford residents recycled 47 per cent, nearly half of everything we threw away.

Our political leaders may be struggling at the climate change conference in South Africa, but Oxford is more than doing its bit to help the environment.

JOHN TANNER (Labour Cllr) Board Member for a Cleaner, Greener Oxford City Councillor for Littlemore & County Councillor for Isis