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Agenda item

Report on Waste Management

Written report from Steve Isles, Director of Sustainable Communities

Sustainable Communities.

 

Minutes:

The Chair introduced the item and invited the Head of Environmental Services and Sustainable Communities to provide the Panel with an update on waste management.

 

The Head of Environmental Services and Sustainable Communities conducted a presentation to the Panel, which can be found via the following link:

 

https://civico.net/croydon/17473-Tenant-Leaseholder-Panel

 

Councillor Clive Fraser (having already given apologies for lateness) attended the meeting at 6.57pm.

 

In response to questions from Panel members, officers informed the Panel that:

 

  • The bin provision was outdated as the amount of waste produced had increased over time. Officers would review the existing structure and 0would formulate a plan for each estate which may require capital investment.
  • Cleaning of the bins would be down to the individual manager agents and housing services. Under the current provisions the contractor was not required to clean the bins.
  • The standard provision of keys should be generic across all the collection crews including fire brigade keys. Some estates may have unique keys or passcodes, officers would need to log this information for each estate so that the collection crews can collect waste efficiently.
  • The replacement of bin containers currently took 10 weeks, this was an improvement but it was still outside of the Service-level agreement (SLA).
  • If a bin collection was missed, then the crews would need to tag the bin and state why that particular bin was not collected. In future, officers and the collection crew would now identify the bins that weren’t collected and explain to the residents why they weren’t collected to avoid future missed collections. This was more challenging with communal waste collections as there was not an individual that could be approached to advise on how to prevent contamination of the bins.
  • Officers would be willing to review the size of the bins on each estate, they could change the shape of the lids on the communal recycling bins but the challenge was that the apertures needed to be small to avoid contamination from black bag refuse waste.
  • The frequency of collection was a challenge, but the council had tried to ensure that the frequency of collections met the average need within the borough. Officers would be able to review their service design, but it was unlikely that they would increase the frequency of collections. Officers would likely look for other innovations to try and address issues.
  • Within the contract there were 29 key performance indicators (KPI’s) and they were divided into waste and street cleansing. Residents had 48 hours to report a missed collection and the KPI was for the rectification within that time period. Street cleansing – rectifying streets blow grade and the KPI was for rectification within 24 hours. These KPI’s were reviewed on a monthly basis which fed back into a quarterly review which the contractor was measured against.
  • The 79% missed bulky waste collections was borough wide, this measured the missed bulky waste collections within the SLA. If the collection was missed completely then the resident would be reimbursed however if the collection was made late then the resident would still be charged. Any refund requests would need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The officer agreed to look at the service and provide feedback to the Tenant and Leaseholder Panel.
  • The 731 streets that had been reported as below grade. The contractor was responding reasonably well to this however there needed to be analysis on which roads were consistently being reported and spot any other patterns in the data which may require an adjustment of resources. Fly tipping was on the rise nationally, this was predominantly discarded domestic waste. There needed to be more resident engagement from officers to clearly explain the issues with fly tipping to residents.
  • Officers could request the collection crews to report the side waste that is left alongside the bins.
  • Officers were able to produce heatmaps which would show them the frequency of the fly tipping in particular areas. The service providers were contracted to collect fly tipping where it has occurred, however they did not have the resources to deploy a more proactive crew which looked for cases of fly tipping instead of waiting for cases to be reported.

 

Supporting documents: