Improvements will be made to North Somerset recycling and waste collection services over the coming weeks as contractors Biffa put in place measures to improve reliability.

In June, after months of planning, around 80 per cent of households saw a change to their collection arrangements, which has worked well for the majority of residents, but has caused real difficulties for many others.

Julian Appleby, Senior Operations Manager at Biffa, said: “A change of this scale is a massive undertaking and for the vast majority of residents the reroute has gone very well but we are still experiencing some challenges that our initial planning could not anticipate.

“On behalf of Biffa I would like to apologise to any residents who have been affected by missed collections over the past couple of months, and to thank them for their patience while we work on service improvements.

“We are increasing the number of vehicles, drivers and crew members we use and these additional resources will be in place by the start of October. This will result in a more efficient and reliable service.”

In the meantime, if collections are not made on the scheduled day residents should leave their containers out and crews will return to collect them, normally the next working day.

Councillor Mike Bell said: “I’m pleased that Biffa have apologised to residents. The service has been a shambles and it is disgraceful that it’s taken 18 months to get it on track. Let’s hope that lessons have been learned and progress will be sustained.”