Issue - meetings

Councillor J. Wilkins (Chair) declared and interest in this item.

Consideration was given to report of the Corporate Director Regeneration & Community Services.

The Team Leader Waste & Fleet Management presented the report which provided an update on progress of the Trade Waste Service Strategic Business Review, and also provided options in relation to the revised pricing strategy for implementation in April 2020.

In response to a question raised by a Member regarding funding of the proposed increase in receptacles to customers, the Officer confirmed that this had been factored into the budget, and some had already been procured.

A Member asked whether there was any benchmarking information available to compare costs with the private sector.

The Officer said it was difficult to compare with the private sector as their costs were commercially confidential.  They were able to offer prices on an ad hoc basis, whilst our prices were set and published.

The Service Manager Community Services said one of the requirements of the new Environment Act coming into force next year was that the public sector and the private sector would have to separate the trade waste collected.  This placed the Local Authority in a positive position as we were already doing this, whereas the private sector operated a co-mingled collection.

A Member then referred to Appendix 6 and expressed concern regarding the response to the on-line customer survey. 

The Team Leader Waste & Fleet Management agreed that the response was disappointing, however, the survey had not been undertaken for a number of years.   He said a new Officer had recently been appointed within the section, and part of that role was to go out and engage with businesses and our customers.

The Committee AGREED to recommend that the report be accepted the introduction of a revised pricing strategy for commercial dry recycling, food recycling and residual collections be supported (Option 2).