Issue - meetings

To consider report 90/11 of the head of corporate strategy. 

The committee considered report 90/11 of the head of corporate strategy setting out the performance of Biffa Municipal Limited (Biffa) in providing the household waste collection, street cleansing, and ancillary services in the Vale of White Horse for the period 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2011.

The committee noted the points below:

Street and environmental cleanliness - litter and detritus

1.      About 800 inspections of street cleanliness were made throughout the district over the year. Officers and the contractor’s representatives inspected some sites together. Sites were selected at random from each type of street and were not reinspected. If a site fell below the expected level it would be visited a few weeks later, after cleaning, to check is the standard was now acceptable. Some roads had been inspected before being cleaned.

2.      Residents were surveyed via the council’s citizens’ panel and it was not possible to work out if the unsatisfied residents came from a few areas or more widely across the district.

3.      Standards of cleanliness had improved on taking over the contract but were now static.

4.      The failure to meet the targets did not reflect the standard of cleanliness. In the town centres this was generally good and had improved, and an increased number of roads were cleaned.

5.      Roads scheduled to be cleaned were cleaned roughly every eight weeks, allowing for variations to deal with high visibility or litter-prone areas.

6.      Un-cleared and overgrown drains were creating problems for street cleaning as the build up of debris in the drains increased the accumulation of litter and detritus. This would be mentioned to the Oxfordshire Waste Partnership for action.

7.      There was a balance needed between targets which were realistic and achievable and those which were unrealistic; and the scoring system needed to be fair and reasonable given that the district had a reasonable standard of cleanliness. Biffa suggested an independent inspection to set a benchmark level of cleanliness.

8.      Currently Biffa co-ordinated community litter picks but had no records of regular litter picking carried out by parish councils.

9.      Extra street sweeping was carried out in spring and autumn when blossom and leaves fell.

Councillors commented that it was better to keep the targets stretching rather than easily achievable to give the contractor something to strive for.

Waste collection and garden waste collection services

10. Refuse crews have clear instructions as to how to collect and replace wheelie bins. Crews worked to demanding targets and could be penalised for missed bins, misplaced bins, obstructing the footpath or driveways, and for leaving lids open.

11. The chips in each bin allow crews to know which bin belongs to which property, problems arise when missed collections are reported because a bin is being used at the wrong address.

12. Biffa was supplied with a list of garden waste bins which should not be collected and this should have been supplied to crews. Garden waste bins were not chipped or necessarily labelled and it  ...  view the full minutes text for item 91