Refuse and recycling collections will take place a day later than usual from 9-13 April because of the Easter bank holiday.

The council is apologising to anyone whose recycling or refuse collection was not collected or not collected on the right day last week.

The problems are due to a new contractor, Enterprise, taking over the refuse and recycling contract. Some factors that contributed to the problems were crews getting used to new rounds and vehicles. This meant that collections were slower and some roads were missed.

Ealing Council is working with the Enterprise to get the service back to normal. Extra crews are working longer hours to pick up any missed collections.

Enterprise will have supervisors to check each collection round has been completed properly and the council will also have its own monitoring staff out checking that collections have taken place.

Where there has been a missed collection, ‘mop-up’ teams are picking up missed recycling together. Even so, some streets have seen no sign of any activity to rectify the situation.

Residents can report a missed collection using the council’s online report it form or contact the council’s customer services on 020 8825 6000 during office hours.

Four collection trucks will be picking up different items, refuse, green box recycling and plastics, food recycling and garden waste. The street cleaning service will take place after the collections to ensure that any spillage is picked up as part of the weekly cleaning service.

Garden waste is now collected fortnightly on the same day as other recycling collections but on a subscription basis at a cost of £40 per annum.

Keith Townsend, executive director of environment and customer services, said: "I would like to apologise to residents who didn’t get their refuse and recycling service last week and thank people for their patience."

"The problems experienced last week are totally unacceptable and we are working with Enterprise to make sure the service gets back to normal as quickly as possible."