Issue - meetings

To enable the Cabinet to consider comments and recommendations made by the Resources and Services Overview & Scrutiny Committee following that Committee’s scrutiny of the Council’s waste and recycling collection service.

RESOLVED that the comments and recommendations of the Resources and Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee be noted and the comments of the Environment and Public Spaces Portfolio Holder, in response thereto, be endorsed.

During the consideration of this item, Councillor I J Henderson declared for the public record that he was a member of Essex County Council’s Climate Change Commission.

Cabinet was aware that, at the meeting of the Resources and Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee held on 21 September 2020 (Minute 86 referred), the Committee had been provided with an overview of the Council’s Waste and Recycling Collection Service.

Future ambitions of the service to further improve the recycling rates:

Members of that Committee had heard that the last of the main delivery of approximately 58,000 wheeled bins had been completed by the end of August 2019 and as such the wheeled bin service had been in operation for just over a year. The report of the Portfolio Holder for Environment & Public Space placed before Cabinet on the 16th February 2018 had anticipated that the fortnightly collection of residual waste from a wheeled bin service would reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill by an estimated 16% (4,500 tonnes) whilst increasing recycling by an estimated 3,100 tonnes and increasing the recycling rate by an estimated 8%.

The Committee had been made aware that the latest audited data supplied by ECC for the period of April 2019 to March 2020 had reported a reduction of waste sent to landfill by 7,363 tonnes, increasing recycling by 2,899 tonnes and increasing the recycling rate from the 2018/19 figure of 27.4% to a 2019/20 figure of 36.6%; an increase of 9.2%.

Those figures had not only met or exceeded the predicted ambitions of the new service, the new waste service had not become fully operational until the last week in August 2019, this indicated that with the first 5 months data based either fully, or partially, on the old weekly collection service, that the future performance of the fortnightly collection service would continue to over-achieve the initial targets set for the service.

It had been reported to the Committee that the Council’s Recycling Officer had recently overseen the installation of a new bring site, located at ASDA in Clacton resulting in the installation of 6 additional glass banks, which had helped support and increase the network of bring sites across the District. Additionally the community bring site in Brightlingsea had seen a larger capacity tetrapak bank installed to help meet demand.

It had been further to the Committee that the Street Scene team had recently taken on a new technical administrator; the purpose of that position would be to provide additional administrative support to the team, which when combined with the increased use by residents and customers of the Authority’s on line My Tendring portal reporting tool,  would further improve the Council’s responses to enquiries and complaints and critically, would free up the Recycling Officer to prioritise their workload in promoting and enhancing recycling within Tendring.

As highlighted above the team continued to work and build upon the foundations of the new waste service, continued to deliver wheeled bins, installed and provided additional  ...  view the full minutes text for item 98