Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Environment and Resident Experience. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Resident Services & Tackling Inequality.

Decision in relation to the Waste & Street Cleansing Service Review, considering who will deliver services from 2027 and how services will be designed.

The Cabinet Member for Resident Services and Tackling Inequality introduced the report, which set out the outcome of a series of assessments, which had been delivered under the ‘Waste Service Review’, focusing on developing recommendations across three broad areas:

-       Service Delivery – who will deliver the services (i.e. in-house, outsourced contract, further extension of the current contract, Local Authority Trading Company (LATCo)),

-       Service Design – how will services be designed to improve recycling and waste minimisation performance (i.e. smaller waste containers/frequency of collections etc), and improve cleanliness of streets

-       Fleet – how will we transition to a Zero Emission (ZE) fleet.

The existing contract with Veolia had been in place for almost 14 years and was due to expire in April 2027. Following the Waste Service Review and subsequent consultation exercise, it was now proposed that the Council undertake a procurement process to approve a service provider to deliver recycling and waste collection, street cleansing and ancillary services from April 2027.

In response to questions from Cllr Hakata and Cllr Barnes, the following information was noted:

-       In relation to having a full commitment to Electrical Vehicles in the first instance, it was important to note that there was no decision, at this meeting, on going to procurement on the operational mode of vehicles and the aim was to continue to look for the least polluting options that were available to the Council. The report set out the cost modelling that had been carried out for the different options. This noted that an electrified fleet was substantially more expensive to the organisation, both in terms of the vehicles and also the infrastructure set up costs, but the Council remained optimistic that over time as battery technology in particular would to evolve and improve bringing prices down.

-       The Director for Environment and Resident Experience added that the HVO option provided significant improvement in terms of the carbon position in comparison to the existing fleet. In conclusion, the report contained the information that was currently available on potential zero emission fleets and the commitment was to continue considering the best options.

-       In response to the question of a reduced household waste bin size being connected with increase in fly tipping, there was no evidence or correlation that showed that boroughs who have the smaller household waste bin size have a higher proportion of fly tipping. This was an issue in London and major cities, regardless of the bin size.

-       Evidence showed that the garden recycling rate was not significantly impacted by moving from weekly to fortnightly collections. Haringey were one of the only a few London boroughs that still had weekly garden waste collection and were rarely collecting all bins. However, the aim was still to keep this service and keep it attractive to people at the right price but ensure that there were fewer truck journeys affecting the environment. There was no evidence to suggest that two weekly garden waste collection reduced  ...  view the full minutes text for item 40