Harrow Council had to spend an extra £30,000 after it sent misprinted bin collection schedules to thousands of homes.

Cllr Varsha Parmar (Lab, Marlborough), who is responsible for the environment at Harrow Council, explained it sent out the initial leaflets with the wrong dates to more than 69,000 properties in error.

She said: “Various checks had been carried out but, unfortunately, this error was missed.

“We corrected it on the website but found many residents still had queries, so we reprinted and sent out the calendars.

“This was at a cost of £30,000, which is around 43p per calendar including printing and postage.”

Cllr Anjana Patel (Con, Belmont), who quizzed Cllr Parmar at a council cabinet meeting yesterday (Thursday, May 27), described the situation as a “waste of taxpayers’ money” and called on the administration to apologise.

Cllr Parmar acknowledged a clear error had been made but did not offer up an explicit apology.

“We are all humans, we can all make a mistake and we’ve rectified it – I’ll leave it at that,” she said.

However, Cllr Patel suggested this was another example of the council failing to take proper responsibility.

“Once again you have blamed everyone else but yourselves for the council’s incompetence – no apology at all,” she said.