To seek authorisation to agree a seven year contract extension for FCC Environment Ltd to continue waste collection services on behalf of the Council, subject to achieving significant savings by moving to alternate weekly collections of recycling and refuse.

THAT:

(a)       The Director for Economy, Communities and Corporate be authorised to come to agreement with waste collection contractors, FCC Environment Ltd (FCC), for an extension of seven years to the existing arrangements to achieve significant savings by moving to alternate weekly collections of recycling and refuse; and

(b)       The Chief Finance Officer is authorised to arrange for the purchase of refuse bins for residents utilising prudential borrowing as detailed in this report.

1.         The council’s budget position requires a review of all expenditure to better reflect available funding.  Under the terms of the current waste collection contract, which commenced on 1 November 2009, an extension of seven years is possible. Negotiations have taken place with FCC to investigate potential savings to the Council if the service was modified and extended. Alternate weekly collections (AWC) are carried out by 216 councils out of a total of 324 in England and in all but one of the Districts in Worcestershire. The yearly savings currently proposed by FCC are sufficient to meet the requirements identified in the Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy. FCC have given two savings scenarios. One where they purchase refuse bins on our behalf and another higher saving if the Council were to arrange purchase of bins using prudential borrowing.

2.         It is recommended that the Council prudentially borrow the finance to purchase the bins rather than FCC doing the same as this will provide additional savings.

1.         By maintaining the existing service of collecting black sack refuse every week and recycling fortnightly current costs would increase in line with the Consumer Price Index every year and no significant saving would be made.

2.         Change collection frequencies to more than alternate weekly eg collect refuse and recycling every four weeks.  Whilst this may reduce costs further it is questionable if this is acceptable on public health grounds or would pass a challenge on the basis of this service being reasonable. Councils currently considering refuse collections every four weeks have weekly food waste collections, garden waste collections and recycling collections. The overall costs of such a service would be much higher than our current recycling and refuse collection services.