ASK an average county resident about ‘the council’ and you’ll get some strong opinions.

Housing developments all over the county fuel outrage at overdevelopment (in more douce parts) or shortage of affordable housing (in more couthy). Potholes in roads, care home places or bureaucracy coming out of John Muir House may also get mentioned.

Having spent 18 years attending East Lothian Council and working across all departments, I have developed a more balanced view and must defend the many unsung heroes I encountered, who receive scant press, let alone praise, for the quiet, efficient way they do their jobs. As an official has said to me: “When you see what’s achieved with a small team and limited resource, it is truly impressive.”

While I would not wish to slight many departments where this applies, I reserve special praise for waste services.

Not the easiest, nor the most glamorous at the best of times, in the teeth of additional problems from Covid, lockdown and the vagaries of Scottish weather, staff in this frontline service have been heroes.

Serving all 53,000 households, each with a wheelie bin, is a hard and unrewarding job.

Then add in 39,750 brown bins of garden waste and similar number of blue and green recycling boxes, plus food caddies, and you have a logistical headache that gets solved without fuss.

Materials end up where they should. Aside from over 10,000 tonnes of trade and other waste, of the 49,797 tonnes of household waste we produce each year, 27,644 tonnes are recycled (a 55.3 per cent rate), with only 7,672 tonnes (15.4 per cent) ending up in landfill.

The lads (there are currently no lassies) on the frontline earn their wages.

While still a councillor, I tried it for myself. My respect for them comes from a day working as a loader on a bin lorry.

From the 6am start, the next eight hours (with one break) was spent rolling heavy bins about and running between houses. I went home drained. And that was not in winter in the middle of a pandemic, while wearing a face mask, plus foul-weather gear.

Last week, I was reminded how quietly efficient their operation is.

One of the six wheelie bins for the flats where I live went walkabout. One phone call to their Kinwegar HQ near Strawberry Corner and a new bin appeared the next week.

Good luck getting that level of service out of ScottishPower.