BOLTON Council’s environment chief said he was “shocked and disturbed” by a national television programme focusing on Wigan Council’s waste department.

Cllr Nick Peel is working on plans to share his department’s services with the equivalent in Wigan — but has raised fears about the behaviour of some staff featured in ITV’s Don’t Blame the Council.

The fly-on-the-wall documentary aimed to show how Wigan Council is trying to maintain services in the midst of severe government cuts.

But the council faced criticism after the programme showed staff sleeping on the job, clocking off work to play darts and criticising authority initiatives. 

Cllr Peel said he felt the programme showed staff offering a “complete lack of customer care” for the residents they were working for.

He said: “There appeared to be an attitude of 'couldn’t care less' — I was shocked and disturbed by what I saw.

“This is not the case at all in Bolton and we are in the middle of putting plans together for working with Wigan Council’s environment department.

“The whole point of the plan to work together is for both organisations to benefit from that partnership — Bolton can bring a lot to Wigan in terms of customer care.”

The plans to share environmental services will be rolled out over the next two years — but Cllr Peel said a lot of work needs to be done.

He added: “There is no plan to halt the progress of the partnership but clearly from my point of view both councils are going to have to be careful in how they go about this.

“There seems to be working practices in Wigan — including customer care, quality of working, engagement with the public and pride in the job at hand — which don’t occur in Bolton.

“They will need to be ironed out and will be brought up in future discussions.”

Wigan Council leader Lord Peter Smith said the programme was “provocatively edited”.

He added: “It was clear that more than 100 hours of filming was edited in such a way to only focus on the negative aspects of the job we do. 

“The team’s efforts to increase income by £5 million to offset cuts to frontline services and create 77 new jobs hardly featured. 

“Wigan Council has gained a well-deserved reputation nationally for working in new ways to deliver high standards of public services. 

"Just last week the council was recognised as one of the best five councils in the country. 

“We are also independently rated as the best 'big council’ to work for and we had a 50 per cent increase in satisfaction with the council last year. 

“We do accept though that there were parts of the show where some staff did not meet the high standards that we and the residents of the borough expect from them — but this is not a true reflection of the great team of dedicated employees we have who care passionately about the borough. 

He added that the authority was looking forward to working with colleagues in Bolton and would "continue to discuss how to take the partnership forward”.

*The documentary can still be viewed online at www.itv.com/itvplayer/don-t-blame-the-council