A husband and wife who have not had their bins emptied since before Easter have come up with a unique way of highlighting the problem.

Becci and Andy Duffus, who live with their three children in Keycol Hill near Bobbing, Sittingbourne have put up a sign keeping a tally of the number of days since their last collection.

The family, like many across Swale, Maidstone and Ashford, have been plagued by bin collection disruption since waste company Suez took over the £152 million contract from Biffa on March 25.

The problems with the service has resulted in rubbish piling up on streets and hundreds of complaints from fed-up residents, including from Becci and Andy.

The couple has not seen any waste collected from their property since March 22 - three-weeks-ago - including their green bins which have not been emptied since a week before that.

Frustration has now led to the pair putting up the wooden sign and placing it outside their home, showing onlookers the increasing number of days their waste has been left uncollected.

As of today (Friday, April 12), it is now 21 days.

Finance assistant Becci explained: "Andy and I were chatting at the dinner table the other night about how many days left we had until we reached our wedding anniversary.

"We put up some wooden numbers in the house which we would then change each day in countdown until we reached the date.

"That's when I joked and said we should do one for how many days it's been since the bins have been collected.

"Andy then knocked it up in about half an hour using some wood from the garage and then put it up by the main road.

"It's about the size of a for sale sign and has three hooks on it and he turns the numbers over every morning.

"It went up on Monday, April 8 - day 17."

The 44-year-old says people are being left in the lurch and need to be made aware of what is happening.

"Biffa are still the last people to have done anything here," she added.

"So the lack of communication has been frustrating.

"I've reported the situation online about 10 times but not had a response, and phoned the council four or five times.

"Biffa used to park on the main road and walk up because they couldn't get their lorry here, so whether or not that information has been passed on too I don't know.

"We have two dogs and a cat, so there is disgusting animal waste in there.

"Plus myself and Andy and our three children, so there's just no room left in the bins now."

Graham Herbert has lived in Keycol Hill for 30 years.

The 76-year-old also hasn't seen his bins collected since before the holidays - other than his garden waste.

He explained: “We’ve not had our bins emptied since before Easter.

“It’s a bit amusing as it all happened [on] the April 1 bank holiday.

“I thought they wouldn’t collect that day anyway as it was a bank holiday, especially because they changed it all.

“But they took the garden bin on April 1.

“That’s the only one we’ve had emptied, but I don’t know if that’s because we pay extra for those."

He continued: “The sign is good because we can’t put our bins out on the main road as there is no path, and they’d just be on the edge of the A2 - if they get emptied then they just get blown across the busy road.

“This is a rare thing to happen but we have been missed before.

"However, we’ve rung the council and they’d sorted it straight away.

“But now I’ve heard people have tried to ring up but they’ve got an automated message and no response.”

Yesterday afternoon (April 11), Suez said sorry and vowed to fix the issues.

General manager Vinnie Masseri said: “We are all working hard to get used to the new contract and to collect all the waste that is being presented, however, we know that at the moment, we’re not completing all of our rounds on the scheduled day.

“This isn’t the standard of service we aim to provide longer term and we expect the service levels to improve as everyone gets used to the changes.

“We’d like to apologise to the households affected and reassure them that our teams are working hard to minimise disruption on the ground.

“We thank residents for their patience while we bed in the new service. In the meantime, please do leave your bins out if they have not been collected and we will get to them as soon as possible.”

Cllr Richard Palmer, The Swale Independents representative for Hartlip, Newington and Upchurch, predicted the problems could last months.

He added: "I am calling this the Suez Crisis, as it has been longer than the actual Suez Crisis in the 1950s which lasted 10 days.

"It's a mess. Of course, you expect teething as it's a new contract but it seems to be a larger issue although I am not sure what that it is.

"In my consistency, things seem to be getting worse for residents not better.

"If you drive along the A2 you will see how bad the problem is.

"There are communal flats that have bins which haven't been emptied for 10 days.

"I expect this will take months to sort out, not weeks, but I hope I am wrong."

Swale council explained there had been changes to the routes crews use to get around the borough, which have contributed to the backlog.

The local authority says the routes "haven’t been updated for a long time and they aren’t as resilient as they need to be".