Agenda item

(Director of Neighbourhoods) To consider the attached report.

The Director of Neighbourhoods introduced his report summing up the recent review of the Waste and Recycling Collection arrangements and their initial service failures.  The Council’s Environment Portfolio Holder believed that it was very important to establish the reasons behind this service failure, not only to help in rectifying any ongoing problems and achieving an acceptable level of future service, but also to help in identifying any lessons for the Council, with respect to the letting of other major service contracts.

To this end, the Environment Portfolio Holder formally requested that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee undertake a review on his behalf, the outcomes to be formally reported back to Cabinet.  Overview and Scrutiny Committee subsequently agreed the request and determined that the Neighbourhoods and Communities Select Committee was best placed to undertake the review, by virtue of their Terms of Reference.

Given the likely level of both Member and Public interest, particularly with respect to the introduction of the revised 4-day collection arrangements, it was agreed that an additional meeting of the Select Committee would be dedicated to this single subject.  Given the Work Programme of the Committee, the availability of external contributors to the review and to allow a period of time for the contract to fully stabilise, a date of the 17 December 2015 was set.

It was agreed that that the review would be undertaken in 4 parts, covering the following issues:

1)    Procurement Process;

2)    Mobilisation and first 6 months of Contract; and

3)    Revised arrangements from the 12 May 2015.

Part 4 of the review was to reach a set of conclusions around what could have been done better and to recommend any key considerations with respect to how the Council could improve procurement and implementation of any future major service contracts.

Officers had reviewed the notes of the meeting and had identified some key points to be forwarded onto the Cabinet. These were:

Part One - Procurement:

·                Competitive Dialogue proved to be an effective means of procuring the new Waste Contract, from both the Client and Contractors perspective.

·                Although the Members interview only scored 10% of the quality scores, and on this occasion did not materially affect the final award, it is considered that Member Interviews are still beneficial for future service contracts.

·                The role that cross-party Portfolio Holder Advisory Groups play in shaping service contracts was recognised as a positive.

·                With contracts which involve major service changes, the costs to the Council should not be underestimated in terms of advising residents etc.  The £50,000 on the Waste Contract was in hindsight, too small.

Part Two – Mobilisation and First Six Months:

·                Overall the Waste and Recycling Contract mobilisation went well, with service quality maintained over the period November 2014 to May 2015.

·                Although TUPE Arrangements were satisfactorily completed for staff transferring from SITA to BIFFA, there were some concerns highlighted regarding communication with staff despite Biffa’s best endeavours.

·                The innovation forum established between client officers and contractor, proved useful in addressing service issues and identifying areas for improvement, this should be encouraged as good practice.

·                The original start date for the change to 4-day collection was not achieved, due to delays in vehicle acquisition and transfer of depots.  However, the revised date of 12 May was still in retrospect too early.

·                The number and type of informal arrangements that exist between householders and collection crews should not be underestimated and should be specifically addressed in terms of debriefing at end of contract periods.

·                Whilst it was felt that the problems encountered around the change to 4-day collection were not simply attributable to the prior notification information provided, it was felt that the letter to all residents could have been clearer.

·                The information contained on the Council’s Website was helpful, particularly the tool which converted postcodes into revised day collection arrangements.

Part 3 – Introduction of Revised Arrangements:

·                Start date for change to 4-day collection too optimistic in as much as new fleet was only delivered days before implementation, preventing crew familiarity and ability to address technical failures.

·                A phased approach was not adopted and had not been elsewhere, to the best knowledge of consultants and contractor.  However, should not be ruled out in future contracts, certainly there would have been value in test rounds with the new fleet.

·                The new IT system would have benefited from earlier implementation and a longer period of testing.  The round information from the start of revised collections was inaccurate, leading to whole streets being missed.  Lack of integration with client system also a major problem.

·                Biffa lost 20% of the workforce that transferred from Sita, the outgoing contractor.  This was a loss of valuable local knowledge which should have been captured in some way.  Changing staff onto rounds in areas that they were not familiar with and an initial reluctance to utilise knowledge of waste client officers, compounded the problem.

·                Some of the fleet purchased was not fit for purpose e.g. Street Sweepers that could not deal with rural road network.  In future, demonstration vehicles may prevent re-occurrence.

·                A need to utilise agency staff to cover additional rounds and cover vacancies, delayed the stabilisation of the contract.  Whilst tender evaluation demonstrated that adequate resources were to be employed, did not take into consideration the effect of staff turnover.  Issue to be explored in future contracts.

In conclusion it would appear that a number of the problems encountered by Biffa when introducing the revised 4-day collection arrangements, could have been avoided with additional time, e.g. to improve staff training and familiarisation with new vehicles and IT, to test drive new routes more thoroughly, to retain and utilise local knowledge of existing staff, to fully run in new fleet and to have operated longer from new depot locations, before the service change.

Councillor Wixley asked why there had been a 20% loss in Biffa staff. He was told that 20% was a high figure. The market for HGV drivers undoubtedly played a part in this, also the 4 day week and the teething problems from the equipment. It may have also been that some of the staff were not good enough. Also, Biffa did not tap into their experience. This led to a general downturn in performance in litter bin collection and street cleansing.

Councillor Sartin the Chairman of that review meeting said she thought that it was a worthwhile exercise as we were able to question Biffa staff. Not only the Council but Biffa learnt a great deal from this exercise. This was a learning curve for the Council.

Councillor Lion wanted to know if the downturn in missed collections and street cleaning was investigated. He was told that these were now down to previous levels as we had with Sita; about 50-60 missed a day. Officers and Biffa were now drilling down to find out just why this was happening. We now have IT aids (GPS and Video) to help us. We were working on assisted collections and were getting to grips with it.  We were also putting more resources into litter collection especially the rural roads.

The Environment Portfolio Holder, Councillor W Breare-Hall thanked the O&S Committee and the Neighbourhoods and Communities Select Committee for carrying out this exercise. He was disappointed that so few members of the public attended the meeting. There were three main lessons learnt: more time was needed; staffing problems – big changes were made and it needed to be handled properly; and Communications with the residents – more money needed to be spent on this.

The Chairman thanked Councillor Breare-Hall and Councillor Sartin for all the work they did on this review.

RESOLVED:

That the Cabinet be advised of the key findings of the recent Review of the Waste and Recycling Collection arrangements.