WEST Wiltshire District Council is shelling out nearly £20,000 of taxpayers' money to employ an officer to deal with recycling complaints, just weeks after introducing its green bin scheme.

The council says the new 'recycling support officer' post is one it had planned in advance and will be key to getting the recycling message across.

As green bins are collected for the first time in Trowbridge, critics say the job is another example of a poorly thought-out recycling policy, which is ignoring their concerns.

The post, which comes with an annual salary of between £13,953 and £14,931, on a short-term contract until March 31 2006, is billed as a chance to improve the environment for the future.

The advert states: "In this high profile, customer-facing role, you will provide a frontline service giving information and advice on the council's recycling schemes and deal effectively with customer complaints.

"An organised self-starter, you will have experience of resolving enquiries and complaints to a high standard of customer care."

Since green bins and fortnightly rubbish collections were introduced in Melksham last month, the Wiltshire Times has been inundated with letters and phone calls criticising the system.

Many readers have complained their bins are now overflowing and the council admits it has received hundreds of inquiries and complaints.

Critics like Paul Coward, of Foresters Park Road, Melksham, have labelled the new job a waste of public money.

He said: "It's absolutely ridiculous. It will be most interesting to see this individual in action.

"Is he going to be knocking door to door and checking on people's bins? I'm bemused by this whole episode.

"It's ridiculous to spend almost £15,000 a year in educating people on their waste. What we need to do is make people more conscious of recycling."

Mr Coward said he received a note on Tuesday saying he could not add extra plastic bags to his rubbish and those he had left out were not collected.

He said: "Down the street we had nine or 10 houses in my view that had black bags waiting for collection."

District council spokesman Louise Knox said: "The job is a customer service role. We knew from the outset with this scheme that we were going to have a number of people who would need additional information.

"We've not got the capacity with our existing staff to pick up that kind of workload and it was felt we needed to have a specialist in that role. It's not just complaints, it's queries as well.

"What we don't want to do is launch the scheme and then assume that in two or three weeks' time nobody has any questions to ask. This is part of our long-term plans."