Agenda item

Context:

This report seeks approval to alter the garden waste collection service from 12 months to 9 months from April 2018. This will take into account the seasonal nature of garden waste and align the costs of collection to income generated.

Key Issues:

The collection of garden waste is non-statutory duty and the Council have made a charge for this service since 2013. The Council is able to recover the full costs of collection and administration of the service but not treatment and disposal.

Garden waste is co-collected with food waste at present but changes in contractual arrangements for treatment for food and garden waste mean that this can no longer continue. From April 2018 the garden waste trucks will only pass customers houses and will no longer need to drive door to door. This standalone service allows us to accurately predict costs of delivering the service based on the existing customers and will also allow us to offer a seasonal service.

The charges for the provision of the service have risen from £8 to £18 over the last five years. The proposed charge for 2018/19 agreed through Fees and Charges Report is £18.45. The increased cost for 2017/18 saw the largest number of complaints and biggest reduction in service uptake since the scheme began. Many customers suggested a seasonal service would be better than the 28% increase in costs and that any future increases should be in line with standard council indexation. There is a substantial drop in usage of the service during the winter months and anecdotal evidence suggests this could be as low as 10% weekly set out rate from December to March. Torfaen and Newport operate a seasonal collection service for garden waste and report no additional issues of flytipping or increased usage of household waste recycling centres during this period.

A programme of work was designed with systems, contact centre, hub staff and customers in mind so that we can alleviate the pressure of trying to renew or register circa 12000 customers. Last year the contact centre had restricted leave during the renewal period, average handling times of 8 minutes, (maximum was 58 minutes) and approximately 200 calls per day

to try and manage. Two additional agency staff were paid for from Waste and Street Services budget over the busiest period.

This year our aim is to contact existing customers in batches from the end of January which allows us 2 weeks per batch, ahead of April new permit period. We have reduced the agency staff requirement based on the plans to batch renew customers and are only looking for one additional agency staff and are working closely with contact centre and hubs to try

and manage the demand. We have both listened to customer feedback, and made changes to try and alleviate the pressures that sending 12,000 renewals out at one time have caused in previous years.

Member Scrutiny:

A Member applauded the scheme as a well thought out piece of work to save money.

A Member suggested that a frozen price of £18 for two years would be more acceptable to the public.

December to March were felt to be the best months to suspend the service.

It was asked if all costs were covered by the fee charged.

A Member asked if green waste fly tipping may become an issue going forward.