Agenda item

Rob Bell, Managing Director

Rob Bell, Managing Director of Ubico, referred members to the performance update which had been circulated with the agenda.

He highlighted Ubico’s financial performance. This was particularly topical as the accounts were being audited by Grant Thornton and whilst this work was not yet complete, indications were that they would be assured. Audit Cotswolds had also found that core financial controls at Ubico were ‘satisfactory’.  Though there were no audited accounts as yet; members were advised that Ubico had exceeded the financial targets that had been set. There were £184k of savings embedded in the 2013/14 budget which had been achieved and there was also an underspend of £50k. Cumulative savings for Cheltenham were in excess of £1million and £2.5 million for the partnership as whole. Ubico were on target to achieve £5million savings over 5 years.

The Association of Public Service Excellence (APSE) had undertaken independent benchmarking of cost and quality compared to other authorities and found Ubico to provide a good quality service and good value for money putting themin the top quartile for both.  Whilst there had been some contract variations of over £10k; since April 2012 there had been no extra work orders raised or invoiced, with Ubico taking the view that if something was within budget, they would simply get on and do it.

He explained that the vision for Ubico was to continue to build performance and reputation and this could include doing work with or for, Tewkesbury Borough, Stroud District, Forest of Dean and West Oxfordshire Councils. No decisions regarding expansion had yet been taken but discussions were proving encouraging and a bigger company would ultimately mean increased savings for Cheltenham through further economies of scale.

The Managing Director of Ubico explained the performance monitoring regime that was in place, which included weekly, monthly, quarterly and ad-hoc meetings with customer services, the Client Liaison Officer, Cabinet members and Scrutiny.

He invited questions on performance and provided the following responses to member questions:

·         Recycling in Cheltenham was at 48.71% and Cotswolds at approximately 60% but the two authorities were not like for like, with urban authorities such as Cheltenham struggling to achieve recycling rates similar to those of rural authorities, such as Cotswolds.

·         Performance at bring sites had improved since the last scrutiny review and there were occasions when banks appeared to be full but were not (e.g. if someone had stacked card on top or failed to feed it into the bank properly).  All businesses were required to have arrangements in place for the collection of their commercial waste and any business found to be using a bring site could be prosecuted.  Ubico did not have powers of enforcement and as such any concerns would be reported to the public protection and enforcement team to investigate.

·          The plastic scheme was performing well and whilst it was still relatively new, it had provided popular with residents. Because this was simply a trial, there were not spare banks to replace those that needed to be emptied.  A report would be taken to Cabinet at some point regarding the future of the plastic scheme and were the trial to continue, more banks would be available. 

·         There were occasions when an issue was logged as a complaint when it was in fact a request for service (i.e. waste is blown into the road from people on their way to the bring site and residents call for it to be cleared).  He commented that 14 days was too long to resolve issues such as this and that he would rather see the target reduced so that the figures were more meaningful.  He would raise this with Customer Services when he next met with them.

The Chairman thanked the Managing Director him for his update and attendance at the meeting.