To consider the performance of waste and recycling services since the commencement of the new contract, the steps being taken to achieve a satisfactory level of service and the lessons to be learned.
Decision:
RESOLVED:
(1) That the Executive Member for Waste and Recycling and Environment and the Service Manager-Waste and Recycling be requested to attend the meeting of this Committee, due to be held on 18 September 2018 to report on the issues and problems faced following the implementation of the new waste and recycling contract in more detail’
(2) That those questions fom Members, unable to be immediately responded to, be recorded and answered by the Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment and the Service Manager – Waste and Recycling as part of the above presentation.
REASON FOR DECISION: To enable the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to consider the issues and problems faced following the implementation of the new waste and recycling contract.
Minutes:
Councillor Michael Weeks, Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment and the Service Manager – Waste and Recycling thanked the Chairman for the opportunity to address the Committee regarding the issues and problems faced following the implementation of the new waste and recycling contract.
Councillor Weeks reminded Members that this was his third appearance before the Overview and Scrutiny Committee this calendar year.
He cautioned that it may not be possible to answer questions this evening about the detail of what had gone wrong as they had not yet been able to undertake any investigations and had not yet got sufficient data.
The Waste Team had been spending all their time getting the contract up and running.
He would identify the main issues and explain what had been done or what they were going to do to address those issues.
The issues mainly related to brown bins not being collected and this was due to data not being on the system, it was not known why this had happened.
Veolia, the outgoing contractor, had not left the service in a tidy manner.
The new vehicles had not been delivered on time and therefore they had relied on hired vehicles, some of which were not up to the jib, but they were now hiring newer vehicles and the first of the 50 new vehicles were starting to be delivered, with the balance being due in August.
A number of staff decided not to turn up for work on the first day
Switchboards were swamped as were message boxes.
A significant minority of residents had been affected.
Things were getting better, with queries reducing.
Urbaser were spending tens of thousands of pounds on the contract and were working extra hours to solve the problems.
Urbaser had now fixed the data issue and everyone who had subscribed to the brown bin collection service was now on the schedule.
It was hoped that collections would be better from now on.
The Service Manager – Waste and Recycling and the Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment addressed the questions asked by Mr Hatch during public participation as follows:
Planning
· A lot of planning work had taken place;
· First meeting regarding procurement started in 2014;
· Procurement took just under a year;
· The bids received during this process were examined and evaluated by officers from East Herts and North Herts as well as consultants;
· Urbaser scored top for performance and value for money.
Caddies
· The Council ordered enough caddies;
· The caddies were delivered to a storage facility, this process was managed by a sub-contractor of Urbaser;
· As a consequence it was found out late in the day that not all of the caddies had been delivered;
· New stock had since been delivered;
· East Herts stock had been used in the interim;
· Most properties had now been delivered to.
Data
· The old contract ran on a paper based system;
· They had been working to try to update this to a 21st century system;
· A lot of information was known by the operatives, but had not been recorded, therefore this data was difficult to transfer to the new system;
· Existing staff had spent a lot of time updating the information;
· Urbaser ran two systems, a payment system and a waste management system and the data needed to be transferred from the payments system to the collection system;
· One issue identified was that residents were allowed in the early stages to input data into address fields and spelling errors had not been picked up;
· Some people had signed up who were not residents of the District;
· There had been some issues regarding boundary streets.
The Chairman acknowledged that officers were still working to sort out the problems and that this should remain their focus.
Questions that could not be answered now, would be recorded and circulated to Members of the Committee and would be answered at a later date.
At the end of this debate the Committee would decide how they would undertake a review.
Members commented that the perception was that a substantial number of things went wrong.
There had not been a satisfactory payment system regarding the garden waste collection in place
They observed that this was not a novel system as other Councils performed this task and expressed concern that the Council enlisted a service that did not work for a period of time.
Members queried what “significant minority” meant and queried whether the customer was making payments to the Council or Urbaser.
In respect of vans, Members commented that it was clear that there were issues that could have been avoided if local knowledge had been passed on and queried why it had not been recognised that the lack of this sort of information may cause problems.
Councillor Weeks advised that the significant minority was between 2,000 and 5,000 people affected.
The Service Manager – Waste and Recycling advised that they were conscious of reports about whole streets being missed and this would be investigated and an answer provided to the Committee at a later date.
Members commented that the initial communication regarding the new garden waste collection service had not been delivered to all properties and asked for information regarding the completeness of the circulation of these leaflets.
Members noted that special collections of batteries and textiles had not been collected asked They asked for reassurance that this was now being done and queried how long people had waited for these and food waste to be collected.
Hitchin Committee had suggested that the next payment date should be postponed.
Councillor Weeks advised that textiles and batteries should be collected and any non collection was down to the staff on the rounds and this was being managed by Urbaser.
Members commented that the transition between Veolia and Urbaser appears felt quite different in North Herts to the experience in East Herts and asked what East Herts had done more successfully than North Herts.
In respect of the delivery of caddies, Members questioned whether the Council should have been more involved
In respect of staff, Members asked whether the staffing levels were now correct and whether they were permanent staff.
They were concerned that in this day and age of technology, the solution given to customers was to paint the number of their house on their bin and queried whether there was a documented recovery plan and how far away a smooth running service was.
Councillor Weeks advised that the transition in East Herts had gone fairly smoothly, however they did not opt for a chargeable garden waste service and they did not have much change in services, therefore the local knowledge was retained.
The Garden Waste and food waste collections were new services for North Herts.
The Waste Team had been understaffed and this had an impact and they were still operating with some agency staff.
A lot of staff were employed to cleanse data, but there was a certain amount of data that was wrong.
Urbaser had the right levels of staff since day one of the contract, however a number of those had been agency staff.
In-cab technology was the way that crews would identify bins for collection in future, but putting the house number on the bins was the simplest way for staff to identify which bins to collect. High tech solutions would delay collections.
There was not a fundamental fault with the service and the teams were currently in a rolling recovery phase.
The Service Manager- Waste and Recycling advised that, in respect of payments, Urbaser collected the payments, although the money came straight to NHDC and the contract with the customer was with NHDC.
The payment system was now fully functional with a fully functioning API transfer system to the waste collection system.
There had only been 6 months to mobilise the service, which was not long enough.
Next year, in respect of payments, they would focus on existing users, who would get a direct communication that payment was due and there would be some marketing, although not direct communication with residents who had not yet signed up for the service.
The Chairman advised that the subject of next year would be one of the issues answered at a later date.
Members noted that two major issues had been staff not turning up for work and the vehicles not being delivered, compounded by the hiring of vehicles that were not up to the task. They queried why these issues could not have been foreseen and contingencies put in place.
The Service Manager – Waste and Recycling advised that the contingency for the purchased vehicles was the hire fleet. The problem with the hire fleet was that a lot of vehicles had been sent to landfill, where they received damage to the mud flaps and wheel aches and it was illegal to travel on the road without these.
In respect of staff, TUPE transfers were always difficult, but they had held training days, which had been the last day to determine who would turn up for work, They also needed additional staff to manage the additional rounds.
Councillor Weeks advised that they were under the impression that the vehicles, which had been ordered, would arrive on time, but that did not happen.
Members commented that a key issue was the communication, mainly with the residents. In future it was important that communications go out via different methods that were likely to reach most people.
Members queried whether sufficient caddies had been ordered and what steps could be taken to ensure that calls made by residents were answered.
Councillor Weeks advised that the correct number of caddies had been ordered, but a smaller number had been delivered. The manufacturer had admitted this mistake and would be delivering the missing caddies.
They were unable to order more caddies initially, as there was no where to store them. In future cadies would be ordered jointly with East Herts to ensure value for money.
Members commented that previous custom and practice had enabled staff to leave earlier than their contracted finish time and queried why it had not been predicted that staff would be upset by having to work longer hours and possibly not turn up to work.
The Service Manager – Waste and Recycling advised that there had been no changes to terms and conditions for staff and that there was ongoing discussion between management and trade unions regarding collection routes and working hours.
Staff may be upset at round changes, but staff were expected to work their contracted hours.
It should be noted that the majority of staff were on the same rounds, doing the same job. There were some staff doing different jobs.
Members queried whether calls regarding missed bins were directed to Urbaser or NHDC and asked when the service would be within acceptable tolerances.
The Service Manage-Waste and Recycling advised that the system was provided by Urbaser, but NHDC had full access. The service should be running as “business as usual” by the beginning of August 2018.
Members commented that this had made people less tolerant of missed bins and queried whether people were reporting the same bin missed multiple times because the agreed collection dates were not being met.
The Service Manager – Waste and Recycling accepted that people would be more sensitive to this issue in future, however they would be looking at performance levels.
There had been a number of cases of multiple calls regarding the same bin and this could be due to overpromising regarding collection dates. Maybe communication regarding collection times should be made to residents.
She had spoken to Urbaser who had reassured her that the majority of missed bins were being collected with 48 hours.
They had tried to provide as many rectifications as possible and would be looking at why some rectifications had not happened.
Because of delays in reporting, missed bins were not seen as a problem until day 3 by which time there were a lot of missed bins.
Councillor Weeks thanked everyone who had helped the Waste Team, who had been under serious pressure.
The Chairman thanked Councillor Weeks and the Service Manager - Waste and Recycling for attending the meeting and commented that she had been reassured that the problems were being managed and that it was now just a matter of time before the service was operating normally.
Note: Please find below a list of questions asked during this item, that have either been answered during the debate, may be answered at the meeting due to be held on 18 September 2018 or may form the basis of a Task and Finish Group regarding the Implementation of the new Waste Contact:
· Why did the Council not spot earlier that the process of paying for brown bin services was not operating effectively?
· Given that there was a known risk of Veolia employees not transferring to Urbaser, what steps had the Council taken to ensure that significant local knowledge had been captured should this risk materialise and operatives no longer turn up for work?
· What arrangements were in place to ensure that those who did not get the brown bin information leaflet were able to avail themselves of the early bird rate for brown bin collection?
· Does the Council know how many properties did not receive the initial information leaflet regarding brown bin collection changes?
· What arrangements are in place to ensure that special collection services, such as batteries and textiles, would operate effectively going forward as there was evidence that this was not initially done?
· Does the Council know what length of time individuals needed to wait to have their food caddy and/or bin emptied? There was evidence that some households waited a number of weeks.
· What might the Council do in response to complaints that payments were made for a brown bin collection service that was not delivered as advertised in the initial month?
· Could consideration be given to putting back the start of the 2019/20 payment period by perhaps a month to reflect this delay?
· Could NHDC learn anything from the way EHDC managed the mobilisation of the new contract?
· Should and how might the Council have been more hands on in managing the transition from Veolia to Urbaser?
· Are staffing levels at the required level and are these staff permanent?
· Is the Council looking to have a more high-tech way (than residents numbering their bin) of identifying properties that had bought into the brown bin service?
· Was there a formal, documented recovery plan in place to get the contract to delivery of the expected service?
· What is the Council going to do to ensure that going forwards there were robust payment collection methods in place?
· Would there be marketing to advertise the brown bin service to those residents who had not yet signed up?
· A significant issue was that vehicles were not available on day one. Why was there no contingency plan to cover this?
· A significant issue was that staff did not turn up on day one and beyond. How did the Council not predict this and consequently not know until after the event?
· There was a significant issue with communication to the public. Can the Council ensure that effective methods of communication using as wide a range of methods as possible are used to reach the maximum number of residents when future communications are required?
· Did the Council order the right number of food caddies and were there enough to cover replacements and provision of service to new properties?
· What steps can the Council take to mitigate the blocking of the Council’s and Urbaser’s switchboards in the immediate future and in the longer term?
· Given that there has been a change in custom and practice ways of working, could the Council not have reasonably expected staff to leave?
· When the Council tendered for work, where was the tipping point between efficiencies needed and the contractor negatively impacting on terms and conditions of staff?
· When customers logged missed bins, where were they logged?
· When would the service stabilise and collection be within normal tolerances?
· What was being done to ensure that individuals’ expectations were met in the future?
· What percentage of issues experienced was related to rectification?
RESOLVED:
(1) That the Executive Member for Waste and Recycling and Environment and the Service Manager-Waste and Recycling be requested to attend the meeting of this Committee, due to be held on 18 September 2018 to report on the issues and problems faced following the implementation of the new waste and recycling contract in more detail;
(2) That those questions from Members, unable to be immediately responded to, be recorded and, if possible, answered by the Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment and the Service Manager – Waste and Recycling as part of the presentation mentioned in (1) above:
(3) That the Controls, Performance and Risk Manager be requested to report on performance indicators relating to waste and recycling in as much detail as possible in all quarterly reports for the foreseeable future;
(4) That the Scrutiny Officer be requested to take note of the list of questions above, so that they can be used as a basis for either the presentation on 18 September 2018 (see (1) above), and/or a Task and Finish Group on the Implementation of the New Waste Contact.
REASON FOR DECISION: To enable the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to consider the issues and problems faced following the implementation of the new waste and recycling contract.