This week marks the end of a long and frustrating saga of local bureaucracy. We have been waiting years for a kerbside collection of plastic, tins, glass etc. Many people in Devon have had it for years, but not our little backwater on the very edge of the county.

Early this year, my neighbour ordered green recycling skips for the 3 houses in our hamlet. She was told this would take some weeks (we all know how scarce plastic is!), and when the skip eventually turned up, there was just the one. I rang East Devon Street Services up, to be told that “oh well, you can’t order a skip for someone else – you have to do it yourself.” I pointed out that since they didn’t know who I was, I could easily impersonate my neighbour so why did it matter – but that was received rather frostily. “You’ll have to wait 8 weeks” – why? Do they get them delivered one by one from China perhaps? So, I rang up, and my other neighbour did the same.

Eventually, the other skips turned up, so we all trotted down to the end of the lane to leave them for collection on the appointed day. No-one emptied them for three days, so the neighbour rang up to ask what happened. She was surprised to be told they would send a lorry specially from the depot (about 15 miles away) to pick up a few bagfuls of recycling. Hmm – very green.

This happened two more times, so we gave up in despair and just took the stuff to the big skips when shopping.

But I was recently impelled to have another go – and this time, whatever they did actually worked, and the stuff was taken away on the appointed day (10th October).

So, grudging thanks to Devon for finally getting their act together, But I can’t help thinking a commercial organisation that was this sluggish would have gone out of business years ago. Since we pay almost 1/5 of out monthly income in Council Tax, it doesn’t seem like stellar value for money!

Update on 21st November - it seems I spoke too soon. The next collection was a day late; the one after that never happened so we drove the stuff to the local centre; this week, they came a day early, and it was only because I'd put the box out early that it was emptied at all. How hard can it be to organise such a simple routine, one asks?