Don't Scapegoat Thanet's Bin Workers
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
News that Thanet’s bin workers are being balloted over industrial action should come as no surprise to anyone. More than 50 GMB members have entered an indicative ballot that closes on 4 September, driven by what they describe as the management failures behind months of collection chaos. If that indicative ballot succeeds, a full strike ballot could follow (Isle of Thanet News).
These are hard-working public servants who have been pushed to the limit, then blamed for a collapse they did not cause. Rather than owning their mismanagement of the Simpler Recycling rollout, senior council managers and Labour councillors have allowed the crews on the trucks to absorb the public’s anger on their behalf.
No longer a rumour. The union has put it on the record
Until now, the claim that frontline staff were being scapegoated rested on what people had overheard. It does not any more. GMB Organiser Frank Macklin has said it publicly and in plain terms:
“We will not allow the workforce to be scapegoated and blamed for the current failings in the Cleansing Service.”
“They have lost all faith in the council being able to run the service properly. GMB members requested this ballot for industrial action – unless the council takes immediate action to bring the service back to standard.”
Macklin says staff are tired of being used as “a political football”, and the union has lodged a formal collective grievance with the council. On the two extra rounds the council announced in July, his verdict is withering: “the same chess board, the same pieces, just being moved around” (Isle of Thanet News).
The council’s own paperwork clears the crews
As I set out in my earlier posts on this disaster, TDC’s own reports identify decisions taken by senior managers and councillors as the cause of the service collapse — not the crews trying to deliver it against impossible odds. The evidence is not seriously in dispute:
●The rollout was under-resourced by design. The council put roughly 27,000 households onto the new system on 13 April 2026 using the same six vehicles and crews that had served them before, on the assumption that residents separating their waste would need no extra capacity. Its own report concedes that assumption was, with hindsight, ambitious.
●Rounds were never redesigned. The new routes were inherited from the old restricted-access rounds — scattered across the district by accessibility rather than geography, so crews spend far more of the day driving and far less of it collecting.
●The service had no slack left. No new collection round has been added since September 2020 despite around 3,400 new dwellings, and the fleet has not grown since 2020, with 18–20 month lead times on specialist vehicles.
●The council abandoned its own phased plan. This is the part residents have not been told. The report Cabinet approved on 24 July 2025 set out a staged rollout — communal properties from August 2025, the remaining properties from January 2026, everything in place by April 2026. What actually happened was a single big-bang switchover of all 27,000 households on one day (Thanet District Council). An eight-month transition with two built-in learning points was collapsed into twenty-four hours, with no pilot and not one extra crew.
The results were entirely predictable. Nearly 4,000 calls about missed collections reached customer services between April and June alone, and the council is now spending £188,000 on six months of emergency vehicles and crews to clean up a mess it could have avoided by sticking to the plan it had already approved (Isle of Thanet News).
Why the blame is being pushed downwards
This cowardly blame culture is, I believe, directly linked to the new East Kent unitary authority that will replace TDC in under two years. Senior officers and councillors chasing well-paid jobs and political careers in that new organisation have every incentive to keep their own records clean — and the easiest way to do that is to point at people with less power and less voice. In doing so they have exposed bin crews to public anger those crews have done nothing to deserve.
That is my reading of the motive, and I put it as opinion. What is not opinion is the pattern: a service allowed to run without slack for six years, a rollout stripped of its phasing, and a workforce left to explain it on the doorstep.
Why this action deserves support
Nobody wants more disruption on top of four months of it. But industrial action would do something the council has so far avoided: force the truth about this crisis into the open, and put the responsibility back where the council’s own reports place it.
As a former TDC councillor and a Green Party member, I will publicly support any lawful action Thanet’s bin workers decide to take, and I hope Green Party councillors and the wider public will do the same. This is about fairness and basic justice and an end to bullying and scapegoating by powerful people who should know better.
What residents can do
●Keep reporting every missed collection individually. It builds the evidential record — and every one of those 4,000 calls is a fact the council cannot argue with.
●Direct your complaints at the decision-makers, not the crew on your street. Write to your ward councillors and to the Cabinet Member responsible.
●Ask the council one direct question: who decided to abandon the phased rollout, and when? Residents are entitled to an answer before the independent service review reports.
●If your complaint goes unresolved after the council’s internal process, take it to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
Previous posts on this crisis
CALL OUT if you are a TDC bin worker, or a TDC officer and would like to share information about the crisis with me please contact me on 07866588766 or ianddriver@yahoo.co.uk Strictest confidence assured
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