HUNDREDS of residents have made complaints about changes being made to bin collections, prompting an apology from council chiefs.

In the past few days, letters have gone out to 14,000 households which are due to be changing from weekly to fortnightly collections.

But in many instances, the letters contain the wrong details for particular streets and cleansing chiefs have confirmed to the Echo that in some cases, they will now have to "think again".

Mike Trim, the city's head of cleansing services, said: "We are the first to hold our hands up and say that errors have been made.

"Mistakes were made, both because of human error and because at some point over the past ten years, wrong information has been put on to our computer systems.

"This is why letters were sent out now, although the system is not changing until September 20, so that any errors can be picked up and put right."

Joan Macnamara, a pensioner living in Polsloe, has always had her bins collected from the rear of her property.

However, the letter she and her husband received from the council said that her collection would "continue to be from the front of the property".

Mrs Macnamara said: "Our collection has never been from the front and we don't want it to change.

"The seagulls rip the bags open and all sorts of things get strewn across the alley.

"It would be worse at the front — for children walking to school and mothers with pushchairs. We want the front of our properties looking nice — we don't want to see bins and rubbish all the time."

Mr Trim said: "The aim of changing the collections is to make it more efficient and cost effective. If the majority of a street is on a front collection with a few from the back, then all will change to a front collection.

"However, now that people have been contacting us with problems, we will be looking at some areas again and where obvious mistakes have been made, we will be contacting these residents again."

"People should not contact us about the change to a fortnightly collection because that is set in stone.

"Also, some residents should wait before contacting us so that they can receive their letter. Some have been contacting us because they have read there will be changes to the collections but if they had waited for their letter, they would have seen that in their particular case, it would not be changing.

"Contacting us electronically will help as it will not clog up the phone system, which leads to people becoming frustrated, and also written information will assist managers to reassess the situation where real issues are identified by residents."

The cost of mailing the first batch of 14,000 letters and the 51,000 bin collection calendars which are still to go out is £12,800.

Mr Trim said: "The new calendars have been designed so they run for 18 months, so will save us money as we send out a new calendar to all households each year anyway."

The cost of sending out a second letter to residents about mistakes would be minimal: "It will just be the cost of a sheet of paper, the envelope and postage although we may get our enforcement officers to deliver some of them by hand when they are in those areas."

In addition to the change from weekly to bi-weekly, all bin collection routes across the city will be changing.

Mr Trim said: "We are starting with a blank piece of paper for 51,000 households. It will take at least three months to bed in and we appreciate the efforts of citizens who are helping us to correct our records. The short-term teething pains will eventually result in a far better service for residents."

The cleansing department can be e-mailed on cleansing@exeter.gov.uk