First, rule out the ordinary explanations
Most missed collections are not missed at all. Before reporting anything, check the obvious: that the collection day has not moved for a bank holiday, that the round has not been rescheduled, and that your bin was out early enough. Crews often start well before most people are awake, and a bin put out at eight may genuinely have been too late.
Then check whether the bin was actually accessible. A car parked across the kerb, a bin behind a gate, or a bin more than the permitted distance from the collection point will all result in it being left.
Finally, look for a sticker or a tag. Where a bin is left deliberately, crews usually attach one saying why. The common reasons are contamination, meaning the wrong material in the wrong container, overfilling so the lid will not close, or excess weight.
Report it, and do it quickly
If none of that explains it, report it to your council. Almost all of them now have an online form, which is faster than phoning and gives you a reference.
The timing matters more than people expect. Councils generally operate a reporting window, often only a working day or two after the scheduled collection, and a report made outside that window is usually refused and the bin left until the next scheduled date. If you have come back from holiday to a bin that was missed last week, you have probably missed the window as well.
Keep the reference number. If a promised return collection does not happen, that reference is what you need to escalate.
What happens next
Where a council accepts a missed collection report it will normally return within a few working days. Leave the bin out until it has been emptied, since a returning crew that finds nothing there will record it as collected.
If the bin was left for contamination, returning will not help. You need to remove the offending material first, and in that case it is worth finding out exactly what was wrong, because the same mistake repeats otherwise.
Where this gets difficult
A single missed collection is an inconvenience. The problem compounds, because the next scheduled collection is usually a fortnight away and the bin is already full.
That is the situation where people start leaving bags beside the bin, which is worth avoiding. Side waste is generally not collected, it attracts animals, and bags left on a pavement can be treated as fly-tipping, which carries a penalty. Waste left outside your property that is traced back to you remains your responsibility.
If you are facing a fortnight with nowhere to put household waste, the realistic options are a trip to the household recycling centre, which is free, or a one-off private collection, which is not but takes it away the same week.
Recurring misses
If the same bin is missed repeatedly, stop reporting it as individual incidents and raise it as a complaint through the council formal complaints process, quoting the previous reference numbers. A pattern reported as a pattern gets looked at differently to four separate reports.
Where a council fails to resolve a genuine recurring service failure, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman will consider complaints once the council complaints process has been exhausted.