Down in the dumps over city red tape

Clearing a relative's house can be distressing enough without being told you'll have to travel across to other side of the city to dispose of their possessions. Marion Brennan tells one man's story.

Peter Tudor's story will strike a chord with anyone who has ever come up against a council "jobsworth" and leave the rest of us shaking their heads with disbelief.

Mr Tudor has hit out at the "ridiculous bureaucracy" of a Black Country council after they banned him from using a tip 500 yards from his father's house, which he was clearing, because he lived in a different borough.

He blames staff at City Direct, Wolverhampton Council's call centre service, who insisted that he travel all the way to Stourbridge to dispose of the waste, even though his father had paid rent and rates to the city for more than 50 years and lived round the corner from the Anchor Road tip in Coseley. So much for the council trying to reduce carbon footprints, says Mr Tudor.

It took a great deal of perseverence and the intervention of his father's local councillor to get through to an apologetic manager but the victory counted for nothing when the next day a different call centre worker refused to reconnect him.

The 52-year-old, of St James's Road, Dudley, was faced with clearing the house in Foster Avenue after his elderly father moved into a care home two months ago.

Since then, 85-year-old Reginald Tudor has died. The former toolsetter, who worked at GKN Bilston, passed away on May 19 at the height of his son's battle to allow him to use his local tip.

Peter Tudor, the director of a Birmingham college, says he will continue the fight and pursue the council for costs.

He claims the authority placed him in a "ridiculous position", even asking where the drivers of the vans he was using lived.

They were, in fact, his neighbours in Dudley who had offered their services free at the weekend because they knew his father was a pensioner.

After contacting Spring Vale councillor Richard Whitehouse, who promised to "knock some common sense" into council staff, the situation appeared to be resolved. A manager rang Mr Tudor and assured him entry to the Anchor Road site. He only had to call him the next day with the registration numbers of the vans he would be using.

Unfortunately, the call centre operator refused to put him through, insisting he could deal with the query.

The best he could offer was access to the Shaw Road tip, in Oxley, several miles away on the other side of the city - and then, only a one-hour window, between 8am and 9am at weekends. Unable to get to the tip during the week, Mr Tudor said the offer was "unfeasible".

"Frankly I have never experienced such a ridiculously bureaucratic system and such unhelpful staff in my life," he says.

"I wonder who is running the services in Wolverhampton when call centre staff refuse to connect people to managers. I can honestly say I am pleased that I no longer live in Wolverhampton. I do not blame the manager from Wolverhampton Council but the staff at the City Direct call centre, who I found to be obstructive and unhelpful.

"The end result is that my father was expected to pay removal fees in excess of £300 when he could have had this service provided free by helpful neighbours. Soon I will have a final bill for rent on my father's house to settle. I fully intend to make a stand against this poor service and offset the costs of the clearance company against any monies my father is calculated to owe.

"I urge other residents of Wolverhampton who have encountered such bureaucratic nonsense and suffered a poor and obstructive service from City Direct to write to their councillors, as I have now done on my father's behalf, to address the extremely poor quality and standards which masquerade as customer service."

Wolverhampton Council has apologised "unreservedly" to Mr Tudor, saying the service he received was "not up to our usual standards" and "not in line with how we aim to care for our customers day-to-day".

Spokeswoman Felicity Roberts adds: "We would like to stress that we are sympathetic to people in such situations as we understand the difficulties they are faced with.

"This is shown in that a new policy has recently been introduced to ensure that people from outside Wolverhampton can use our household waste and recycling centres to dispose of items on behalf of residents moving into care or who have died. Unfortunately the operator Mr Tudor spoke to had not been brought up-to-date with this policy change which was the initial cause of so much frustration."

She adds: "Mr Tudor was then requested to use the Shaw Road site because Anchor Lane cannot be accessed by high-sided vehicles and it was not established until late in the communications that Mr Tudor was using a high-sided vehicle.

"Shaw Road can accommodate these vehicles for most of the day on weekdays but only for short periods on weekends because staff must go to the front of the site to open the barrier, taking them away from helping all the other visitors.

"We completely understand that this was not convenient in this case and are sorry that an adequate solution could not be found.

"Wolverhampton City Council fully appreciates the importance of excellent customer service which is why we have embarked upon a major improvement programme which will focus particularly on our customers' access to services.

"In the meantime, we will thoroughly investigate Mr Tudor's complaint - and learn from the lessons."