Thousands of houses across the borough were missed out of Swindon Borough Council’s database used by its waste and recycling collection department.

And, councillors were told, it meant that when new routes were drawn up as the authority’s waste collection and recycling regime was overhauled in autumn, that the bins and recycling boxes and bags put out by thousands of houses were not collected – or if they were it was down to the diligence of the crews on the ground.

The council’s cabinet member for highways and the environment Councillor Chris Watts is also responsible for the waste collection and processing departments.

He presented his annual report to the authority’s overview and scrutiny committee, following a summer and now a winter where thousands of bin and recycling collections have been missed.

Responding to a request from Conservative Daniel Adams to score himself, Cllr Watts responded: “For the efforts against the constraints we faced and the work put in to stop the system going into complete chaos, I’d give the staff 10.”

Invited to score his own performance Cllr Watts declined.

He said a large number of the problems faced since November were down to assumptions made in the planning phase of the new recycling collection system which he says turned out to be incorrect.

He said: “In the planning and project management phase in 2022 and until April 2023 there were assumptions made about the functionality of the recycling vehicles, and there were issues with the back office system and its roll out.”

Cllr Watts added: “A position had been put in place in 2021 to run that system but it was never filled.

“We were looking at why we were seeing people complain about missed collections which were not in the system when we found several thousand homes were not put into the system.

“That throws out the data when you are looking at route optimisation.”

Cllr Watts said the planning of how the lorries would unload at the depot was also poor meaning they were queueing for too long, again adding delays to the rounds.

Committee chairman Cllr Dale Heenan asked Cllr Watts when he had made the final decision to go ahead with the new regime.

Cllr Watts agreed the date was October 5 last year, and agreed he sat on the project board overseeing the whole thing.

But he emphasised that the planning of the scheme had been finished by the time he took over the cabinet portfolio.