Agenda item

Councillor Coleman, Cabinet Member Clean and Green Environment and Sanjay Mistry, Project Manager

The Chairman introduced Gareth Edmundson, Managing Director of Ubico and Wayne Lewis of the Joint Waste Partnership (JWT) and explained that Councillor Coleman, Cabinet Member for Clean and Green Environment and Tim Atkins, Managing Director of Place and Economic Development were on hand to answer any questions.

Wayne Lewis provided a brief overview of initial waste and recycling performance following the launch of the new service in October 2017, which saw the introduction of new vehicles, new collection rounds and a wider range of recyclable materials.  He felt that at this early stage it was difficult to form a judgement as to whether it had been successful or not and that this had been further complicated by the two instances of adverse weather.  However, compared with the previous service, recycling had increased and was likely to exceed the modelled 2%, but this was not to say that there had not been some service issues.  Crews had struggled to complete some rounds and this was due to the volume of recycling being presented and inconsistent sorting of materials by some residents, which resulted in rounds taking longer than they should.  Some temporary additional resource had helped to resolve the issues and work was now ongoing to understand how to address this going forward.

Gareth Edmundson introduced a PowerPoint presentation (Appendix 1) which he hoped would explain some of the issues.  He stressed that failure to complete was not the same as a missed collection as a result of crew error and explained that these failures to complete were a consequence of the volume of recycling being presented at kerbside and inconsistent sorting of materials.  Having gone out on a shift himself, he’d seen first-hand that whilst entire row of houses could have sorted their recycling very well, the next row of houses may not have separated it at all and explained it could take almost double the time to complete a collection when the materials were unsorted.  This was relevant because crews had a finite time in order to complete rounds and Ubico had no choice but to recall crews back to Swindon Road by 5pm so as not to break regulations and risk being reported to the Traffic Commissioner and or health and safety regulations relating to working in the dark.  This meant that some rounds had to be rolled forward to the next collection day and there would have bene some residents who would have had repeat instances of collections on different days to those which had been communicated to them.  Narrow access streets is an historical issue and whilst advice was sought from existing users of Romaquips and Ubico operatives and drivers, to inform procurement, there was a balance that needed to be achieved between having vehicles that enabled service to all roads and buying the minimum number required to provide the flexibility and capacity required.  To address the issue of non-completion of rounds, two additional vehicles have been added and have specific rounds and data was being collected and rounds adjusted to ensure that the service was as efficient as it could be. A business case will be presented back to CBC commissioners for review and decision once Ubico are confident the rounds have settled.  The net additional cost of the new service would only be know once collection and recyclate levels had settled but the original cost estimated in the December 2016 agreed Cabinet report was between £146k and 350k.

Responses had been provided to questions received in advance of the meeting.  See table below. 

The following responses were given to member questions raised at the meeting itself:

• Wayne did not feel that Autumn was a bad time of year to launch a new service and noted that the severe weather conditions could not have been predicted.  From Ubico’s perspective, there were questions around the running and maintaining the previous fleet, which was very old.  Ubico couldn’t have predicted the severe weather but were in the process of looking at how this risk will be managed going forward. 
• The mobilisation of vehicles was a complex process.  Drivers were not asked to take a vehicle down a street if they did not feel safe in doing so but this clearly depended on the knowledge and experience of the particular driver.  If Councillor Walklett could give specifics about which streets previously had smaller vehicles and are now seeing larger vehicles undertaking collections, then Gareth could look into the issue for him.
• Income would increase in line with the amount of recyclate being collected and income in the form of recycling credit from GCC but this would be offset by the additional cost of the new service and may not cover it. 
• Smaller vehicles had been deployed to resolve narrow access properties to resolve access issues.
• After the adverse weather co-mingling of recycling enabled crews to make additional collections more quickly but it had been made clear to crews that the commissioner (CBC) had to give permission for this and Gareth would be interested to know what streets residents claimed to be witnessing co-mingling on a regular basis so that he might investigate further. It was noted that some recycling was co-mingled and then sorted manually.  Overall, co-mingling of recycling should happen very rarely but the incidence was higher across December and January to enable the crews to cope with the adverse weather.
• Residual waste had decreased and figures would be circulated to members by email.
• Cameras were fitted to the new vehicles.
• Ultimately more vehicles meant more cost and a blend of vehicles was required to do the job.  Smaller vehicles clearly had less capacity and required more frequent trips to unload which increases costs.
• Wayne felt that waste was an important consideration for planning as planning decisions could create future waste collection problems.  Gareth was interested to know which development had been permitted with the condition that the developer had to find a private company to undertake the waste collections.
• The JWT/Ubico were aware of communal waste and where residents used black bags rather than bins and could agree these properties were given a priority as part of the emergency planning procedure, in acceptance that missed collections posed more of an issue for these residents than those with bins. 
• Given the level of communications about the new service, the spike in recycling was not unexpected but there would need to be ongoing communications to maintain current levels.  It would be possible to use intelligence relating to tonnage to focus messages to particular areas and another option was to analyse where general waste included recyclable materials.
• Food waste was reducing, generally people found this messier and therefore it was important that this message was reinforced regularly.
• The JWT regularly reviewed what approaches proved successful in other areas and why.
• Home composting bins were available to purchase from the recycle for Gloucestershire website at a subsidised rate and Master Composters were on hand to give advice to residents and/or groups.  Waste Doctors and multi-language leaflets were not something that had yet been considered.
• Wayne stated that it was often the case that areas with a higher turnover of residents tended to achieve lower recycling levels compared to areas with a more settled population.
• There was an established Adverse Weather Protocol which involved an assessment of the conditions first thing in the morning.  The only decision reserved for Ubico in adverse weather is whether or not it was safe for crews to carry out collections. If collections ae suspended the council are provided with a range of catch-up options to make a decision.  It was fully appreciated that continued disruptions proved frustrating for residents and decisions to suspend collections were regularly reviewed but it was unfortunate nature of the business that service had to be suspended if crew safety was in question. 

·         Supervisors capacity to respond to issues was reduced during and after the adverse weather as they were supporting the service.

• Details of non-completions are reported at the end of each day and these are prioritised for the next day and whilst Ubico did not rely on residents reporting ‘missed collections’, this was useful for Ubico.  They were pleased to report that there had failure to complete had been resolved by the provision of extra vehicles.
• There were some streets where confusion over maps and which route they were included in lead to missed collections and the difficulties to complete other rounds had compounded the issue.  Gareth apologised to residents who had been impacted by issues and expressed his hope that as the service continues to settle the small numbers of residents affected will regain their confidence in the service. 

·         A number of members, including two members of the public commended Ubico for the service that they provided, which despite some missed collections, they felt was of an excellent standard. 

There were no questions for the Cabinet Member Clean and Green Environment. 

The Chairman thanked Gareth Edmundson and Wayne Lewis for their attendance and wished Ubico well over the next week or so, given the bad weather which was being forecast.