People living in a handful of city centre streets who say they were confused by a consultation form will be asked about their waste collection preferences for a second time.
It came as changes to bin collections across the New Town were agreed, with many existing communal bins set to be replaced by bin hubs in the near future.
Streets in the area currently have either gull-proof sacks (GPS) or communal bins, but the council recently undertook a consultation to re-assess how waste collection works there.
Residents were asked whether they wanted their streets to have communal bin service or gull-proof sacks.
However, some said that they did not understand that, by ticking a preference for communal bin collection, they would be lined up to get new bin hubs, rather than their current communal bins.
Council officers will now reach out to residents on a ‘small number of streets’ to confirm what sort of waste collection they want to see on their streets.
Steve Canney, chairperson of the Buckingham Terrace Garden Committee, told councillors: “Our current arrangement is that we have kerbside recycling and communal bin hubs. For many years we had the large black bins, which we accessed from our garden.
“We were a bit surprised by the consultation notice with the gulf-proof sack consultation.
"We feel like the interpretation of these results as support for kerbside bin hubs is not supported.”
Waste collection in the New Town has been controversial for over 20 years, as the council has had to find a difficult balance between meeting residents' desires, running an efficient waste collection service and maintaining a clean streetscape in the city’s World Heritage Site.
The wider consultation, which ended in April, served as a rebuke to the council’s preferred option for the New Town, which was the widespread adoption of GPS in the area.
A two-year trial run of the sacks on a few streets in the neighbourhood proved successful, with local residents approving of the switch.
Off the back of this, the council proposed moving much of the New Town to the sacks, but some 73% of respondents said they opposed this.
Most of the streets which currently have GPS will keep them, and a small number of streets where residents voted for them will get them.
The remainder of the New Town will see communal bin hubs installed instead, which will replace the bins currently in use there.
Other groups of New Town residents have expressed dismay about where their new bin hubs are set to go, saying having bin hubs next to their homes would, among other things, decrease their property values.
Conservative councillor Max Mitchell, who addressed the committee as a ward councillor for Inverleith, said: “Bins are our bread and butter, and we should get that right.
“Crucially, not long ago, convener, I came to this committee and compared myself to Cassandra, where I was warning your predecessor about trying to silence residents when he encouraged voting against consulting with residents.
“And what happened? A u-turn happened. Because [in an earlier phase of the bin hub rollout] that response blew up in councillors, and indeed the department’s face.
“I returned once more to start talking about the relaxation of bin hub rules. And what happened again? Your predecessor did not listen, and encouraged the shutting down of residents’ wishes.”
Cllr Mitchell said that, unlike his predecessor, transport convener and Labour councillor Stephen Jenkinson had ‘agreed to listen, and work cross-party’ when it came to waste collection.
However, he said that the bin hub report presented to councillors on Thursday rolled back a cross-party consensus developed in November last year, which saw bin hubs located across the road from homes permitted in some circumstances.
Cllr Jenkinson said: “There is probably no perfect answer. There is probably no perfect solution to this. I felt we had a 90% success rate with regards to bin hubs, and where they are placed.
“I was looking for that extra 5% to get us to a level of satisfaction with the placement of bins, to tick as many boxes as possible.
“I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but we need to get there soon. I don’t want to repeat the consultation process indefinitely.
“If there’s going to be a consultation coming to your street soon, I would encourage everybody in that street to take part in that consultation, tell us what you think, tell us what you like, tell us what you don’t like.
“Because that will help form the decisions and recommendations officers will bring to committee going forward.”
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