James Duddridge, Member of Parliament for Rochford and Southend East, has released a statement he received from Mr Robert Tinlin, Chief Executive of Southend Borough Council regarding waste collections in Southend. James made representations to Southend Council following a number of complaints received from constituents as a result of a problems local residents have encountered with waste collections by contractor Velia.
“Our contract for residential waste collection, re-cycling and street cleaning needed to be retendered last year. Because of the length of the previous contract we had to go to the open market. We received numerous bids and the successful new contractor was Veolia. Veolia is a prominent contractor in this field across the country. Our previous contactor, Cory, did bid but that bid was not as competitive as others. Cory has since been the subject of a takeover by another operator.
As part of the retendering process, we looked at the specifications to address economy but also changes in legislation and regulations governing recycling and also ways to reduce costs arising from bank holiday changes in collections. The bidders also worked to introduce alternative operational methods.
The new contract involves a move to collections over four days rather than five. This avoids disruptions and costs arising from bank holidays. The new contract also saw a change to the type of truck being used – collection trucks now have split compartments to take two types of waste collection and to allow all collections to be made on the same day. The third main change was to split the dry recyclables in order to separate out paper and card. This is partly to meet new regulations, but also to allow us and our contractor to avoid contamination of the paper and card; this allows us to obtain better value and prices for the paper and card and, therefore, keep the cost to the Council and taxpayer down. The blue boxes are a common method of doing this across the country.
The new contract allowed for the transition to these changes from mid-May. This involved the new vehicles, issue of blue boxes and consequent change for recycling and changes in collection rounds and days. The first two weeks of this transition went smoothly. The third week coincided with the late May bank holiday and Veolia arrangements, and communication with residents, went awry. This resulted in confusion, late or missed delivery of boxes and advice or changed arrangements, and missed rounds. Despite various efforts the following week saw the situation worsen as Veolia tried to recover from the previous week, and continue the roll out and cope with revised rounds. The Council, as client, escalated its efforts to get the situation resolved. This included the involvement of myself, the Leader and the Portfolio Holder together with Veolia’s Regional Director and its national Chief Operating Officer. Veolia brought in experienced teams from other contracts to shore up local teams to both recover and finish the transition roll out. The temporary use of a private sector waste transfer station, which had slow turnaround times, exacerbated the situation. This was resolved by the earlier opening of the new dedicated waste transfer station at our depot on Eastern Avenue. We had also delayed implementation of paper collecting in flatted properties.
The new collection arrangements now seem to have settled with increased paper separation and collection and reducing complaints.
We did have some issues with some advice to residents who had difficulties lifting or carrying filled boxes. This too has been resolved with retraining for Veolia staff and enhanced personal support for residents with specific needs.
We continue to closely monitor the situation and liaise continuously with Veolia.”