The councillor responsible for the town’s much-maligned bin collection service has accepted there were “repeat issues” with the service.

Cllr Hayley Eachus made the comments at a Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council Scrutiny meeting on Tuesday night, saying that the service was now “stabilising”.

“I can ensure you, having seen all of the data, that the service is stabilising,” she told councillors.

“I accept there were issues, and there were repeat issues. There was these extra crews that were going out as mop-up. It’s lessons learnt and I am confident that things are on the up, but we are moving forward and things absolutely show that we are stabilising.”

Since the new routes were introduced in July, the Gazette has reported how some residents didn’t have their bins emptied for six weeks.

There was also significant issues reported by people that use communal bin stores and on the assisted collection list.

However, Tuesday’s Scrutiny committee heard how in October, the service has begun to stabilise, with 100% of waste and recycling bins collected on two weeks.

The committee was also told how changes to round schedules on the garden waste service saw completion rates improve from around 48% at the start of September to 100% by the end of the month.

Missed collections on roads that had been marked as completed also fell from 869 on one week in August to 261 by the end of October.

She was joined at the meeting by John Elson, Head of Environmental and Technical Services at Hart District Council, who are in partnership with Basingstoke on the scheme, and Duncan Hadland, Interim Contract Manager from Serco.

Mr Elson told the committee: “We have had some disruption, it’s unfortunate, but we have put measures in place. We’re going to see improved reliability, we can see improved resilience.”

Meanwhile, Mr Hadland said: “The problems would have only got worse moving forward (if that rounds had not changed in the summer). It was unavoidable and extremely necessary.

“We’re always finessing the rounds and we’re not going to be happy until there are no missed bins and no issues.”

However, multiple councillors spoke about how some of their residents are still facing issues.

Cllr Gary Watts, who represents South Ham, said: “I do think there is room for improvement.”

He explained how six residents had complained recently, with some of those issues still ongoing.

Additionally, Cllr Janet Westbrook said: “I came to the last scrutiny meeting to talk about the waste collection service to talk about the problems in Popley. Still there’s problems in the ward, and I think we’ve hit on the point that communal bin stores are a problem.”

Cllr Ian Tillbury also added: “I have been a councillor for 17 years and I’ve never seen as much chaos as we’ve had in the last six months.”

Concluding, committee chair, Cllr David Potter, added: “If we find that things haven’t improved in the way you say they will, I think we reserve the right for an updated report in January.”