The Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment to be available to answer questions from Members of the Hitchin Committee regarding the Waste Contract.
Decision:
Audio Recording – Start of Item – Session 1 – 1 hour 40 minutes 54 seconds
The Chairman welcomed Councillor Weeks, Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment, and thanked him for agreeing to attend this meeting.
Councillor Michael Weeks, Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment, thanked the Chairman for the invitation to address the Committee and gave a verbal presentation regarding the issues and problems that had occurred since the introduction of the new waste contract.
The Chairman thanked Councillor Weeks for agreeing to attend the meeting and commented that Executive Members attending local meetings to answer questions was very important.
The Chairman announced there would be a short comfort break.
Minutes:
Audio Recording – Start of Item – Session 1 – 1 hour 40 minutes 54 seconds
The Chairman welcomed Councillor Weeks, Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment, and thanked him for agreeing to attend this meeting.
Councillor Michael Weeks, Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment, thanked the Chairman for the invitation to address the Committee and gave a verbal presentation regarding the issues and problems that had occurred since the introduction of the new waste contract as follows:
· The waste contract was in some disarray, for which he apologised;
· The issues were operational and the Council did not have a lot of control over these issues;
· The main issue was regarding residents who had paid on-line for brown bin collections that had not been collected;
· The data regarding several thousand properties was not transferred to the Urbaser system;
· Some of the rounds were not accurately recorded on Urbaser’s system resulting in areas where streets were missed;
· Whilst it was believed that most of the staff would transfer to Urbaser a number of staff did not do so for various reasons;
· The new vehicles were not in place at the start of the contract resulting in a lot of hired vehicles being used;
· The hired vehicles were not up to the job, but these had now been replaced with more appropriate vehicles;
· The delivery of food caddies was 1500 caddies short. This was solved by borrowing stocks from East Herts District Council.
In response to these issues, Urbaser made the decision to collect every brown bin. This was seen as an opportunity to catch up, although this had now ceased.
Urbaser were throwing tens of thousands of pounds and as much resource as possible at the contract.
There were a lot of new and agency staff and Urbaser were undertaking appropriate staff training.
A statement was issued today as follows:
“Councillor Michael Weeks, NHDC’s Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment said:
Unfortunately, at the start of our new contract with Urbaser there had been some issues with the reliability of data held for those customers who have signed up to the garden waste service, this has led to a number of brown bins being missed on several collection dates.
Urbaser have been working hard to catch up with collecting missed bins, however, given the inconvenience this caused, last week they decided to collect any brown bins that were put out for collection.as a short term measure whilst the issues are worked on.
Urbaser are now confident that they have identified the data issue and therefore they will shortly be reverting to only collecting brown bins that have been paid for. The operation will be kept under close review.”
In response to Members observations, concerns and questions, the Executive Member for Waste, Recycling and Environment advised:
· Food caddy collections were an issue and this may be due to the operatives concentrating on collection of the brown bins;
· There were a lot of inexperienced staff, which may have resulted in the minor collections, such as batteries and sharps, not being collected and this could be a training issue;
· There had not yet been time to fully investigate why the issues occurred as staff had been entirely focussed on mobilising the contract;
· The number of phone lines remained an issue, although the number of phone calls received was reducing;
· There were penalty clauses in the contract regarding performance, but this was not being considered at the moment. The focus at the moment was on getting the service up and running;
· The reputation of the Council in respect of waste was currently rock bottom, it was hoped that the problems with the waste collection would be resolved soon;
· Ultimately waste collection staff would be fully employed rather than using a high number of agency staff.
Other comments made by Members included:
· It would be nice for residents who paid for the garden waste collection to get an extension of one month as an apology;
· It was disappointing that the response to queries about identifying who had paid for the brown bin collection was to put the house number in the bin;
· When would a high-tech solution be provided to identify which brown bins would be collected:
· The Overview and Scrutiny Committee should be able to see the actual contract when reviewing the service;
· It was important to ensure that the issues did not result in any costs to the Council.
The Chairman thanked Councillor Weeks for agreeing to attend the meeting and commented that Executive Members attending local meetings to answer questions was very important.
The Chairman announced there would be a short comfort break.