Agenda item

The Acting Executive Director: Communities said that she hoped this item would be the beginning of an ongoing conversation with Members.

The Strategic Lead for Waste gave a presentation that covered the following areas:

•                 The Creation and Delivery of the Waste Services Agreement 2018 (the Contract).

•          Operational Performance against Contract Requirements.

•          Expansion of Commercial Food Waste Service.

•          BWC Commercial Offering; Direction of Travel.

•          Residual Waste.

•          Recycling Initiative update.

•          Street Cleanliness Measurement.

Following on from the presentation the following key points were discussed and Members asked a number of questions:

•          New contracts with BWC have been broken down so they can now be managed more effectively and reviewed on an annual basis more easily.

•          Officers picked up on an earlier point about offensive graffiti and said they were striving to improve the timescales for removing it. 

•                 Some of the statistics provided were questioned by Members particularly one where it stated that work was ahead of target but still getting worse.  Officers said that this related to the heatwave that had resulted in 2,000 missed collections during that period.  

•          Officers said the issue of ‘who’s land is it’ has now been resolved and it is being cleared straight away now.

•          Current policies for different types of land process etc; officers agreed that they need to help people understand what the clearance policy is. 

•          The higher than average turnover of staff was highlighted.  Officers said there had previously been too much reliance on agency staff but that figure is down to 4% - 5% now and that figure should now reduce quite swiftly.

•          Members requested to know what is happening with regards to the Cabinet decision to provide households with an extra blue box. 

ACTION: Officers to report back what the plan is with regards to the decision on the extra blue recycling box

•          Members said that residents say they can’t get through on the phone to report issues about waste and fly-tipping.  Issues then get passed on to councillors to make the reports online which creates extra work loads for them.  It was asked if a process could be devised where they could get fast tracked somehow; especially because they do so much reporting on behalf of other people.  Officers said that 85% of calls were answered in line with the current service level agreement (SLA) but this would be looked into. 

ACTION: Officers to report back on what can be done to support Councillors on this.

•          Members requested to know about the Community Liaison Team especially where staff numbers had been reduced; will there now be 3 or 4 officers and would the boundaries be changed?

ACTION: Officers said they would confirm the situation with members as soon as possible.

•          Marketing and the 20% target:  A Member pointed out that the small business shouldn’t be squeeze out by trying to achieve this figure.  Officers said they are keen to make whole streets consistent.  Particularly where there are local high streets and there is an opportunity for the whole area to have one contractor.  Members said they would like the 20% data figure broken down in future.

•          Members would like to see more information about income opportunities from reuse in future.

•          A Member asked what the average CO2 levels were per household. 

ACTION: Officers said they would need to look into this and report back. 

•          It was asked what work was taking place with independent retailers in comparison to what the Coop and others have adopted recently.  Officers to look at how they can work with smaller retailers more.