A package of measures to prevent a repeat of the chaos that ensued when a new firm took on a multi-million-pound bin contract has been agreed – but some councillors have warned the problems are yet to be resolved.
Swale council has carried out a review of what went wrong after Suez Recycling and Recovery UK replaced Biffa in March last year, when weeks of missed collections resulted in thousands of complaints about the service.
A five-month investigation by a cross-party group of councillors included interviews with council and Suez staff and a review of feedback from more than 2,000 responses to a public survey.
Its work led to a total of 23 recommendations for what should happen in future so there is no reoccurrence of the failings.
They include the levels of training; staff resourcing, for the council and Suez; the impact of new developments on the waste service; continuous scrutiny of how the contract is going; and internal and external communication.
The recommendations were agreed by the council’s environment and climate change committee on Wednesday (January 15).
Cllr Rich Lehmann (Green), who chaired the review, dismissed suggestions there had been some sort of “cover up”, saying: “There’s a lot more constructiveness in the report – what went wrong and how we can do better in the future – rather than ‘this person’ is to blame.
“That may leave some people who have experienced a poor service feeling shortchanged.
“It may be anticlimactic for some who wanted pointing fingers or heads to roll.”
Cllr Julien Speed (Con) said the review had been “constructive” and did not “seek to blame people”.
“The most important thing is to make sure that we never make these same mistakes again,” he added.
“We are nearly 10 months into the contract and like many other councillors, there’s not been a single week that I haven’t been contacted by residents about missed bins. Those problems are still ongoing.”
All councillors praised the report for being thorough and well laid out.
Cllr Dolley Wooster (Lab) suggested a report from council officers should be published every six months to go alongside the annual review from Suez.
Cllr Paul Stephen (Swale Ind) asked what was being done to improve the database of routes, which he believed to be the core problem.
He was “disappointed” it wasn’t being addressed more.
The councillor added: “I don’t think that we are anywhere near solving this issue and the way we are going at the moment, I can’t see an end to it.
“It’s bad management. You tell someone there’s something wrong and it keeps happening, who is to blame?
“It’s not the guys out on the road, it’s the information they have been given.”
Martyn Cassell, the council’s head of environment and leisure, agreed the routes database had been the main problem.
However, he told members his team was working hard to log information – the issue being that it was in the heads of the bin workers and not on the system.
“There is never going to be a waste service that completes 100% every day of the year,” he explained.
“There will be elements that happen, whether that be access to that particular road or a breakdown.
“That’s why we have these tools for residents to be able to report them.”
He added: “I might not be popular for saying this because clearly there are pockets that are still seeing problems: we are not far off from a normal service.
“You will not find a contract in the country that delivers everything, every day.”
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