IT took eight phone calls and three weeks for Trowbridge residents to finally have their green bins collected.

Barbara Hikes, of Melton Road, is one of many who pay Wiltshire Council £48 a year for green garden waste bins to be collected every fortnight, on a Monday.

However after Hills Waste Solutions took over collection duties from FCC Environment on July 31, Mrs Hikes’ green bin was not collected on August 13 and some of her neighbours have missed their last two collections.

Over the course of three weeks, the 70-year-old called Wiltshire Council eight times to get a collection, which finally took place on Monday evening.

“The delays have been ridiculous. It is pretty shambolic how this has been handled,” she said.

“Some of my neighbours have assisted collection services as they cannot put their bins out but nobody picked them up. The bins were almost overflowing.

“One van came along last week and told us we were not on the list, but that wasn’t passed onto Hills Waste and then on Saturday they asked if I needed my blue bin collected, which I didn’t.

“It has been an awful lot of effort and wasted time. They have to improve.”

A Wiltshire Council spokesman said:

“We strive to deliver a high quality service, but with more than 750,000 bins and boxes of different types of waste and recycling to empty across the county every fortnight, a small number may be missed. We are working with our contractor to improve performance and reduce the number of collections missed.”

Call 0300 4560102 to report missed collections to the council.