Agenda item

Gareth Edmundson (Managing Director – Ubico) and Scott Williams (Client Officer – Joint Waste)

Gareth Edmundson, Managing Director of Ubico and Scott Williams, Client Officer from the Joint Waste Team, talked through a PowerPoint presentation (Appendix 4) and the key points included:

·      The old waste and recycling service had been in place since 2011 and with the collection vehicles at the end of life and waste and recycling rounds inefficient due to additional properties, changes were required.

·      An 18 month project (to implementation) was undertaken and 2 public consultations undertaken in 2016 helped to identify the improvements.

·      Although collection frequencies had stayed the same, the new service launched on the 16 October included: an expansion of the recycling materials collected at the kerbside; collection days changing for the majority of residents; new refuse vehicles and; new reusable cardboard sacks.

·      The service would take 6-8 weeks to bed-in but already a large proportion of residents had shown to be sorting their recycling appropriately.

·       Additional benefits of the new scheme would include: built in resilience for breakdowns and less time waiting for missed collections, as well as less environmental impact as a result of reduced mileage. 

·      At present, Ubico had seven shareholding authorities, over 600 employees, they maintained and operated over 350 vehicles and projected turnover for 2017/18 was circa £30m.

·      Ubico delivered a number of services for its clients which included grounds maintenance, trade waste and recycling, street cleaning and pest control amongst many others. 

·      A new management structure has resulted in there being two distinct aspects to the business: operational and commercial.

·      2017/18 milestones included, but were not limited to: implementing new terms and conditions, nurse led absence and Employee Assistance Program and recommissioning support services.

·       After a period of growth it was felt that the existing corporate values required updating whilst ensuring that they were meaningful and helping staff across the partnerships feel part of Ubico.    This would help embed the principles of: being safe; working together; improving communications and customer service and; renewing commitment to honesty and respect.

·      The 2017/18 business plan commits Ubico to developing a strategy to achieve £1m turnover from external income thus resulting in greater returns to shareholders and a number of areas would be explored.

The following responses were given to member questions:

·      Traditionally, the rebalancing of rounds was done every 7 years (based on vehicle renewal) and with the introduction of zoning this would be much easier in future.  In actual fact some contingency had already been built in to accommodate for new developments. 

·      The new vehicles included cameras as well as trackers. As part of Gloucestershire wide Health & Safety forum, Ubico is supporting a scheme led by Biffa on reporting dangerous drivers, which Gareth had witnessed first-hand having accompanied some crews during their collections.

·      During the first 6-8 weeks missed bins would not be reported until 3pm and collections made the next day but after this initial period had passed, supervisors would be able to simply radio the vehicle and the collection made the same day as far as possible.

·      The new vehicles all had Euro 5 engines which was the most economical on the market at the moment and despite alternative options currently being considered for support vehicles, this would not be an option for the waste vehicles themselves given they weighed 26 tonnes.

·      Once the bedding-in period was complete, the next step would be to look at the level of use of bring sites and see if improvements could be identified?

·      Ubico offered a business recycling service for which there was a charge and as bring sites were not policed it was acknowledged that such sites were open to abuse by businesses.

·      Staff had been given four separate briefings on the fact that cardboard bags and lids should be put into the recycling box after collection.  It was felt that simplified values (i.e. taking pride in your work / take care) would allow for more effective debriefs of crews and it was noted that the better the standard to which a residents recycling had been sorted, the more beneficial this would be to crews and would minimise the time the vehicle/s spent blocking roads. 

·       A long and comprehensive communication campaign was undertaken ahead of the launch of the new scheme which aimed to make it clear to residents how the scheme would work.  Despite some claims that it was complicated and would ultimately discourage people from recycling, a large number of people were presenting their recycling as was intended. 

·      It was envisaged that it would take another two months before it would be possible to get a real picture of whether the amount of waste going to landfill had reduced but it was noted that such data would need to be considered in the context of external factors which affected waste data on a year to year and even a season to season basis. 

·      Residents had been misinformed if they had been advised that they would lose any additional green bins that they had previously had, though the issue of side waste was one that would soon be reviewed.

·      There were two targets, the Gloucestershire wide target which called for an increase in recycling of 60% across the county by 2020 and a Cheltenham self-imposed target of between 48-50% in recognition of the fact that urban areas could not achieve the same rates as rural areas.  It was felt that the 60% target would be far more challenging to achieve given the measures that had already been put in place across the county.

·      New compactors had been installed at the Swindon Road recycling centre.  Ubico were aware of the issues that since arisen and were working to resolve them.

·      A full review had been built into the service redesign project.

·      Feedback from operatives in relation to the new vehicles had been very positive.

The Chairman allowed a member of the public to speak.  The gentleman explained that he had recently moved from Pirton in Wiltshire which he felt had a model recycling centre.  The site was clean and tidy and had two members of staff specifically charged with challenging the public to recycle anything that could be recycled rather than using general waste.  He suggested that Swindon Road would benefit from staff doing the same.

The Chairman thanked Gareth and Scott for their attendance and suggested that it was too soon to judge how successful the new scheme was and the committee would instead wait to review the detail of the de-brief.