To completely waste police time?

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Our food recycling bin went missing - probably blown away. Looking at the council website to find a replacement I found this:

What if my wheeled bin or food caddy has gone missing?

If one of your wheeled bins has gone missing, please call xx Police on 101 to obtain a crime reference number and then call us on xx to request a replacement bin.

WTF. I know the police won't investigate but why should I report it as a crime, and add to the crime figures etc. But I do want a new bin and there doesn't seem to be another option.

I think your best bet is to call the council on Monday and see what they say - but I totally agree with you, it's ridiculous.

I wonder what your local paper would make of it? They could also ask the police for a comment on whether they saw issuing crime numbers for lost wheelie bins as a good use of their resources

Just checked my local council's website and they charge you for a new bin. However, that's just for general rubbish bins. Recycling bins are free - presumably because they want to encourage recycling and, faced with the prospect of paying for a new recycling bin, most people around here (in a fairly low income area) would just start dumping their recycling in the general waste bin rather than forking out for a new one.

This happened to me at work. I had to call for an incident number and they sent two real coppers to take a statement. Not PCSOs but real coppers. The took a description of the bin and everything!

The prodigal bin turned up three months later. Think another business had taken it by mistake, so then we had two.

It usually wasn't a crime number as such we handed out. It was a call reference (every phne call received was given a number automatically, and we made notes against it).