Complaints to East Herts hit 228 in 2025/26, the most on the council's record, and the waste rollout accounts for 61%. Just 53.5% were answered in 10 days.

East Herts Council took 228 complaints in 2025/26, more than double the year before and the highest figure in the ten-year run it publishes. The council’s own report says the bin changeover caused most of them.

The numbers are in the Annual Update on Complaints going to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday 15 September, in the name of Cllr Joe Dumont, the Executive Member for Corporate Services.

Stage 1 complaints rose from 112 in 2024/25 to 228. The report calls that a 104% increase and attributes it to one service: “The operations complaints are mainly linked to the waste contract mobilisation. This contributed to 61% of all complaints received in 2025/2026.”

Where the complaints went

Operations covers waste, street cleaning, parks and open spaces, leisure and BEAM. It accounted for 139 of the 228 stage 1 complaints on its own.

Service Stage 1 complaints, 2025/26
Operations (waste, streets, parks, leisure) 139
Revenues and benefits 29
Housing and health 28
Planning and building control 18
Comms, strategy and policy 12
Democratic and legal services 2
HR, and strategic finance and property 0

The rise in the communications and customer services figure is traced to the same cause. The report says it is “mainly linked to the staff behaviour during the waste contract implementation, where a number of temporary staff were employed in customer services, and service standards did not meet our internal expectations”.

Planning went the other way. Complaints about planning and building control fell again, to 18 at stage 1 and 5 at stage 2, which the report describes as the lowest level since before the pandemic. It credits better explanation of decisions before the decision notice lands.

Half of complaints missed the 10-day target

The council’s target is to investigate and answer a complaint within 10 working days. In 2025/26 it managed that 122 times out of 228, or 53.5%.

At stage 2, where a complainant appeals the first answer, 15 of 43 were answered inside 10 working days, or 34.9%. The report notes that the stage 2 timescale is an internal measure and is not promised to complainants, because a second investigation can take longer.

The council blames volume and complexity. It points to “the need to obtain information from multiple teams or external contractors” and says refresher training has been given to complaints leads for 2026/27.

Stage 2 complaints rose from 24 to 43, a 79% increase and the most since 2021/22. Waste and housing together made up 65% of them. But the share of stage 1 cases that escalated actually fell, from 21.4% to 18.9%.

One line worth reading twice

Buried in the learning points is an admission about evidence. “The absence of call recording limits the Council’s ability to evidence interactions during complaint investigations,” the report says. At least three stage 2 complaints were upheld or partially upheld for that reason alone, because nobody could establish what had been said on the phone. Where there is no evidence either way, the report says the council’s default is to give the customer the benefit of the doubt.

On outcomes, 74 stage 1 complaints were upheld and 70 partially upheld, so roughly two in three were at least partly accepted. At stage 2 only 3 of 43 were fully upheld.

The 100% figure that is not what it looks like

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s dashboard records East Herts with a 100% uphold rate for 2025/26, against 74% for similar authorities. The report explains the arithmetic, and it is worth knowing before the number is quoted at anyone.

The Ombudsman dealt with 14 East Herts complaints last year:

  • 6 were not matters for the Ombudsman
  • 7 were reviewed and closed without investigation
  • 1 was investigated, and that one was upheld

One case out of one investigated is 100%. In that case the Ombudsman found the council had already put things right through its own process, so no further action was required.

What it means for you

If you want to complain to East Herts, the practical points from the report are these:

  • Put it in writing through the council’s website. Complaints logged that way get a reference number immediately. Those arriving by other routes are generally logged within three working days.
  • Expect to wait longer than 10 working days. Just over half of complaints met that target last year, and barely a third did at stage 2.
  • Keep your own record of phone calls. The council does not record them, and it says that has already decided the outcome of complaints both ways.
  • Stage 2 is an appeal, not a rerun. Only 3 of 43 stage 2 complaints were fully upheld last year.

If the problem is your bin collection rather than the council’s handling of it, the schedule and the missed-collection route are on our Bishop’s Stortford bin collection days page. We looked at what the new contract has done to the district’s recycling rate in East Herts bins, one year on.

The committee is asked to review the report and make recommendations to the Executive Member. It meets at 7pm at Wallfields, Hertford.

Sources