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THE boss of Bournemouth Borough Council has apologised to residents and councillors for not informing them their wheelie bins were chipped.

Chief executive Pam Donnellan spoke out a week after the Daily Echo revealed that all the new smaller-sized wheelie bins given to residents were fitted with a passive chip.

And she confirmed that residents who had chosen to remove their chips would not be made to pay for new ones.

In a statement to cabinet, she said: "I would like, on behalf of the council staff, to apologise to any resident who has been concerned about any aspect of the new system and to any councillors who may have felt ill-informed when dealing with questions and queries from residents and the media."

She added: "In designing the information packs we omitted to give any explanation about the chip identification system. This was a mistake, but it was not intentional.

"With hindsight, it is clear that this additional information might have helped reassure those residents who had concerns and could have avoided misleading statements that have appeared recently in the press and wider media."

Bournemouth MP Tobias Ellwood had been among those urging the council to apologise for not informing residents about the chips.

Earlier, Bournemouth council's operations manager Reg Hutton admitted there had been an "oversight" and said information about the electronic chips should have been made public before they were installed in people's bins.

"Hindsight's a wonderful thing," said Mr Hutton. "I do think that the chip issue should have been put into the leaflets and people should have been made aware of them. Unfort-unately, it was an oversight."

Former Yellow Buses managing director Roy Edgley, who belongs to Bournemouth East Conservative Association, said the incident had damaged the council's reputation.

"The way it's been done has left a bad taste in everybody's mouth," he said.

"It's really been quite sad that elected representatives have been ignored, or even worse, treated with disdain.

"If the councillors had been brought on side and bought into it, they could have convinced the electorate. It makes it difficult to convince people to vote."

10:44am Friday 8th September 2006

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