UNCOLLECTED rubbish and recycling in Denbighshire is attracting “rats, maggots and flies” residents claim and some are threatening to withhold paying their council tax until it is sorted out.

The local democracy reporting service has been bombarded with complaints and claims from furious Denbighshire residents who say rubbish is piling up since the chaotic launch of the new Trolibocs recycling system in June.

Bin collections were moved from monthly to fortnightly with recycling collected increased to weekly instead of fortnightly but the roll-out has been beset by problems.

Denbighshire County Council’s chief executive Graham Boase has already apologised to residents after thousands of missed collections.

The council’s online reporting system is also reportedly overwhelmed and crashing, and councillors and residents claim it’s impossible to efficiently report an issue.

But residents say their rubbish is still not getting collected, and many have now had enough.

Ian Jarvis, 56, who has lived in Waen since 2016, said: “We’re now two and a half months into this shambolic system and we’ve had three collections of recycling and one collection of general waste.

“Driving to the Waen from the A55 is no longer a picturesque lane as it is littered with overflowing bins awaiting collection. Nobody from DCC bothers to answer complaints, and Graham Boase (chief executive) is off on his holidays!

“It is absolutely disgusting that this system has been brought in, clearly without sufficient time-and-motion studies being conducted to establish whether the collections are feasible, with the resources available to DCC, and those who get paid by the public purse cannot even manage a response, apology, or arrange a collection."

Andy Jones, 59, from Tremeirchion, said: “From the end of May, we didn’t get any bins collected in June.

"Since June we’ve only had three collections, and we are in the middle of August now. It should have been collected last week, and they haven’t. They (the refuse workers) have gone past again today and said we are not on the list.

“I’m flipping annoyed. I pay £480 a month council tax, just for my property, and I pay for my daughter’s education, and the only thing I get from Denbighshire in my eyes is the bin collection.

"So I asked the question, could I cancel my council tax until these bins are sorted out? Legally I’m not allowed to because it’s a contract. Surely their collections are a contract they have with me as well, and nobody is doing anything about it.”

Mike Pritchard, 58, lives at Marian Cwm near Dyserth and said there was a lot of frustration in the village, claiming unemptied bins have been left out for weeks at a time.

He said: “Marian Cwm is only a small hamlet, but pretty much 100 per cent of residents were really frustrated that we were getting no information about the service itself.

“We are in the middle of the countryside, so we expect to see mice and vermin, but there were definitely a little bit more of the four-legged furry animals around.”

“Our council tax has gone up. We pay a lot of council tax up here. We get very little in terms of services because we are an off-the-beaten-track village.”

Cllr Chris Evans said the people of Denbighshire are not getting the service they deserve.

“It’s been ten weeks now since they implemented the new bin system and rolled it out,” he said. “We are still having non-collections. Residents are reporting it. I’m reporting it.

“The recycling vehicles are going down the road, and there might be a row of 10 houses, and they miss five on that row.

"You’ve got old and infirm people that have to try and pull their own trollies out where before they had assisted bins. The whole thing is not working.

“When the residents are reporting it online, that system is actually crashing. They might report it five, six, seven, 10 times, and nothing happens. We’ve got maggots. We’ve got flies. There are rats. There are foxes pulling out rubbish.

"It is a mess. They might have control over the towns, like Denbigh and Ruthin, but it is out in the rural areas.

“It is not fair. The leader and his cabinet have raised the council tax. We’ve (the council) spent £22m, and we still don’t know how much this is going to cost because it is an ongoing issue to get under control.

“The chief executive Graham Boase went on the tele to say, ‘We are a week behind. We are getting a grip of it.’ We haven’t got a grip of it. I’m not happy, and residents aren’t happy at all. There is talk now from residents of withholding their council tax.”

A Denbighshire County Council spokesman said the authority would take recovery action if residents withheld council tax.

The spokesperson said: “Although the service is generally much more on top of the daily scheduled collections across the county, we do still have a number of persistent and repeated issues at specific locations.

"We have therefore introduced a new process for dealing with these repeated missed collections from Monday 12 August, and we are confident that we will soon resolve these issues.

"We thank residents for their ongoing patience whilst we fully embed the new waste collection service.

“Council tax paid by residents is collected to fund local services in Denbighshire and includes community council and police precepts.

"It is a tax that residents have a legal obligation to pay based on the band of property they live in. It is not linked to any particular service or indeed the performance of any particular service.

"It is important that residents continue to pay their council tax in line with their most recent bill, and not to withhold payments. If residents fall behind with council tax payments, this may result in recovery action.”