Council cabinet agrees steps to tackle recycling problems

* One of the new trolibocs at the centre of problems.

Denbighshire County Council is to pay for extra vehicles and staff at a cost of over £2m to help overcome major problems created by its troubled new household waste collection system.   

Since its introduction at the start of June there has been a catalogue of problems with late or missed collections right across the county, including Llangollen.

At a special meeting of its cabinet yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) members agreed to approve the purchase of eight new vehicles plus taking on eight extra drivers and 11 more loaders in a bid to ensure the service can be delivered on a sustainable footing.

The cabinet was considering a report from the council’s Corporate Director: Environment and Economy & Head of Highways & Environmental Service which said that on June 3 this year the council implemented a new waste/recycling service.

And it adds: “It soon became apparent after the roll-out of the new service that some of the assumptions were flawed.

“The main issue being some of the daily recycling rounds had been designed with too many properties requiring collection. This meant we were seeing several rounds per day not completing, resulting in large and unacceptable numbers of missed collections.

“Without committing additional resources the new service cannot be delivered successfully and sustainably and we will continue to spend significantly more on inefficient short-term day-to-day decisions to ensure missed collections are minimised/corrected.

“The day-to-day management decisions since the roll-out have focused on the hire of additional vehicles, increase in the use of agency staff, and the use of overtime for existing staff.

“In order to put the new waste/recycling rounds on a sustainable footing additional recycling rounds are required. The original model as rolled out was based on 20 rounds per day. The number of additional rounds required ranges from 6 to 8 rounds depending on the day of the week.

“This requires the purchase of an additional eight vehicles at a capital cost of £1.299m and additional drivers and loaders to operate the vehicles."

Cabinet was also asked to approve an additional £1.067m of revenue costs in order to ensure the service change can deliver as planned on a sustainable footing. This includes the revenue costs for the prudential borrowing for the vehicles.

The report added: “If this additional budget is approved, then we can immediately plan to implement the necessary changes, and the introduction of the additional rounds can commence within week’s of today’s Cabinet meeting.”

Members were told that the additional cash needed to implement the plan would be raised through borrowing.

At the start of yesterday's meeting the lead member responsible for recycling, Cllr Barry Mellor, said: “We all accept that the new service hasn’t worked as well as we wanted it to.

“We now understand why it hasn’t worked and what lessons need to be learned.

“We used temporary resources to address the problems – agency staff and hired vehicles. However, we need a permanent solution in place to ensure the service is on a sustainable footing.”

Tony Ward, the council’s corporate director for the economy and environment, admitted: “We didn’t design enough recycling rounds into the new service. The number of rounds needs to be 26 to 28 rounds per day depending on the day of collection.”

He added: “We now have experience of what happened. We are working on the basis of real evidence rather than on assumptions.

“We are looking at every single round on every day and concentrating on those rounds that haven’t worked to make sure that they do.”

He said he believed that the new business model would allow the council to hit its statutory recycling targets set by the Welsh Government.

During a discussion about those who had paid for green garden bin and trade waste collection but not received a proper service for four months, Councillor Terry Medies suggested that as a gesture of goodwill they should be given a four-month holiday on their direct debit payments from last December to March.

Tony Ward said that although this was an issue that needed to be addressed compensation wasn’t an issue for this particular meeting.

Chief executive Graham Boase said it had been a difficult time for everyone – residents officers and councillors but added: “We’ve tried to be open and honest but we will learn from our mistakes.”    

At the end of a lenghty debate the new recycling model was approved by the cabinet.