Further to the adoption of the Council’s new Integrated Waste Management Strategy in July 2021 and subsequent planning for additional commissioning this report seeks to agree the council’s preferred waste collection arrangements necessary to implement the strategy.

The council’s Waste Management contracts for the collection service and the disposal service are due to expire in 2023 and 2024. The council launched a waste collection consultation with the public in December 2020 following recommendations from the waste task and finish group in September 2020 and in response to expected changes in national legislation. With the consultation concluded, the council will set out its preferred future operating model with a view to procuring the future collection and disposal contracts over the next three years.

That:

a)    The Council supports residents to increase recycling by adopting the new waste collection model as outlined in this report with a view to being fully operational in November 2023. This includes:

a.     The introduction of a new two weekly garden waste collection service;

b.    The introduction of a new weekly food collection service;

c.     The adoption of a twin stream recycling service to enable residents to further segregate recyclable materials and;

d.    To adopt a three weekly residual collection model.

b)    A further report is brought back to Cabinet in July 2022 outlining the capital costs that it will be recommended are added to the council’s 2022/23 capital programme to ensure successful implementation of the preferred model in terms of fleet, waste containers, equipment and depot alterations;

c)    A further report is brought back to cabinet in July 2022 detailing service specification and seeking permission to commence the tendering process for the new service

d)    Authority is delegated to the Section 151 Officer to take all operational decisions to implement the above recommendations

1.             Do nothing - This is not an option as the current waste collection arrangements are due to expire in November 2023 and there is no further extension option available. The waste collection and disposal services are statutory services that the council has to provide so therefore it is not an option to do nothing.

2.             Re-procure the existing operating model – A review process looked at different systems for collecting household waste and concluded that this is not an option in meeting the council’s Integrated Waste Management Strategy.  Significant changes to government waste policy are also expected increasing segregation of waste streams and to introduce weekly food waste collection services. This requires a change to our current operating model.

3.             An independent review was also undertaken by SLR consulting to consider whether to bring the service back in-house, whether to move the service to a local authority arms-length trading company or whether to continue to procure the service from the market. The review concluded that the most effective and efficient option was to continue to procure the service from the market (Appendix 7 - Exempt).