OXFORD City Council is no doubt casting an eye across the border to the Vale of White Horse and hoping its words of assurance about the new recycling set-up do not come back and bite it.

The Vale has radically altered how its rubbish is sorted and collected for 51,000 households.

It is a mammoth undertaking and it was confident it would go smoothly.

Now opposition councillors are claiming it has not been handled as well as we had been led to believe, with 1,000 calls a day ringing in with queries and complaints.

It is not clear how many are proper complaints. With such a big scheme you can’t expect perfection but the murmurings are getting louder.

Much of the information distributed to residents before the roll-out was very good, but the council and its contractor Verdant must act quickly to remedy any problems. If there is still the same level of complaints in a fortnight it really has got problems.

Similarly, the city council’s new collections begin on Monday and it is already expressing confidence.

For a recycling scheme to flourish it must win people’s confidence quickly, otherwise it has a big hill to climb to get credibility.

Again, absolute perfection will be unattainable but the city will be judged on how it reacts to solve residents’ problems quickly.