When the green waste bin renewal came up this year, I asked the Isle of Wight Council if I could cancel the bin subscription during the year, as I was expecting to move to a property with a much smaller garden soon.

The council told me I could, but that I still had to pay the entire amount for the year.

As this is quite a lot of money — the subscription has been increased to £96 for the year, a 30 per cent rise in respect of last year — I decided to cancel the bin.

Soon after that, and before my green bin was collected by the council, I heard that the move was not going to be as straightforward as expected and would take a lot more time.

As I still had my bin, I phoned the council to ask if I could keep it and renew my subscription anyway.

However, this was not possible and I was to be placed on a waiting list.

This all happened around April 1 (not a joke!) and although I was sorry about this, I put the bin out to be collected by the council and wait until my name would come to the top of the waiting list.

At the time of writing, my bin has still not been collected, despite several emails and even a formal complaint to the council.

My renewed proposal to make life easy and let me keep my bin and charge me accordingly for a new subscription has been repeatedly refused “because this is not how it works”, and so I am in the weird situation where I have a bin, I have loads of garden waste, I am not allowed to use the bin and the council is losing out on money for a subscription.

Is this bureaucracy or is this bureaucracy?

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