Allerdale's refuse and recycling service has recorded an improved record in the past several months.

The Allerdale Waste Services company, owned entirely in-house by Allerdale Council, reported a month-on-month improvement in missed collections across July, August and September.

The update was presented to council leaders on Monday by Allerdale Waste Services managing director Charles Holmes.

He said there was a relatively substantial increase in the amount of recycling and bulky waste collected in comparison to the April, May and June quarter, though he suggested that was most likely due to the lockdown conditions.

Across the second quarter of this financial year, Allerdale teams recorded a collection rate of 99.92 per cent, Mr Holmes said.

"There were, as there always is every month, a number of containers that were missed the first time,' he said.

"In July, it was 482, in August, 351, and September 344.

"There's a month on month increase in performance in terms of the numbers of containers which were missed.

"We are improving on that, and we are going to some lengths to ensure that we're collecting as many of the containers as we possibly can."

It is the company's aim to ensure missed collections are sorted within 48 hours.

Where containers aren't able to be collected, our goal is to go back within 48 hours to collect them.

"For the second quarter, there were 31 containers that we didn't get back to within that 48 hour period," he said.

Mr Holmes added that the company is working on the "frequently missed containers".

"Some of those missed throughout the month and throughout the quarter, we're finding that they are being missed, some of them, on a frequent basis," he said.

"When we started looking at that, just coming into the second quarter, there were more than 60 that were being missed more than twice.

"We've been working with the crews and with those households to try and bring that figure down.

"The most recent figures for September, there were just 26 that were frequently missed.

"We're working to get that figure down as low as we possibly can, ideally towards nil."