An organisation which fights for better public service has criticised Canterbury council contractors for refusing to collect rubbish from homes across the district more than 5,300 times since the start of the year.

The figure was obtained following a Freedom of Information request by the Kentish Gazette.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance campaigns director Mark Wallace said: “This is a quite startling level of service failure.

“When people are struggling to make ends meet due to spiralling council tax, the least they can expect is their bins emptied without a fuss.

“Increasingly, councils are finding every excuse not to do the job and level extra charges and fines.

“Local authorities seem to be forgetting that they should be serving the public, not the other way round.”

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The most common reasons for refusal for collection are people putting rubbish in the wrong type of bag, putting rubbish in more than one wheelie bin or putting extra bags out with their wheelie bins.

Other reasons included householders putting glass or polystyrene in recycling sacks, neither of which Canterbury council is willing to collect.

The council says Serco, its contractors for rubbish collections, had refused to pick up refuse 5,374 times since January 1.

With 96,000 collections per week over 37 weeks, that equates to 0.15 per cent of all collections in the district.

Council spokesman Rob Davies said: “We collect only one bin from each household, unless they have been assessed as a large household suitable for a second bin.

“So we will not collect second bins, or bags left at the side of bins or overflowing bins.

“Where people have put the wrong type of waste in the bag, we will not collect it and we will not collect glass.”

Mr Davies added: “Although around 5,000 collections may not have happened, the total number of collections was 3,552,000, so it’s actually a tiny fraction.”

People can be sent warning letters and then fined £60 if they fail to comply with the council’s rubbish collection rules.