Agenda item

The Assistant Director for Environment attended and introduced the report.

Attending on behalf of Veolia was Ben Velmans--Regional Manager.

LBB was now in the second year of the contracts that had been agreed with Veolia in 2019—the total contract period was for an 8 year term.

The contracts were managed via a governance model; KPIs were monitored on a monthly basis. The report covered a number of contract streams, one of which was waste disposal. The waste disposal contract stream had performed satisfactorily during the pandemic in meeting the KPIs and zero waste had been sent to landfill which had exceeded the target. With more people working from home during the pandemic, more business and domestic waste was collected. Staff shortages during the pandemic had caused a dip in performance with respect to waste collections.

During the period covered by the report the recycling target was not achieved, and the reasons for this were covered in the report.

There had been an increase in green garden waste customers.

The street cleaning targets had been achieved throughout the pandemic period. It was further noted that during the period covered by the report, there had been a 17% increase in service requests to ‘Fix My Street’.

A Member highlighted some errors in the report which were noted by the Assistant Director. A Member referred to section 5.22 of the report which detailed various inquiries that had been received in relation to all aspects of street cleansing. He was interested to know if there was a particular hotspot where these complaints were originating from. He suggested that going forward that some sort of measure or analysis of these hotspots be incorporated into future reports.

A Member referred to section 5.14 of the report which stated that the moisture content in some loads of paper and card was so high that it could not be recycled. The Member wondered what could be done about this and what the potential cost to the Council could be. He mentioned that the waste recycling bins did not have hard lids which meant that rain water was getting in. He said that it was a shame that paper could not be recycled because of rainfall.

The Assistant Director responded that in future reports, details of complaint hotspots and potential costs incurred by the Council would be incorporated.

Mr Velmans outlined the procedures being adopted by Veolia to reduce their carbon footprint. The biggest factor would be the type of vehicles used. It was explained that at the beginning of the contract, Veolia procured some electric vehicles but primarily standard diesel engine vehicles for the main dust carts. They were the best vehicles that were available at the time of the initial procurement. As had been previously noted with the TfL presentation, some challenges existed with electric vehicles in terms of being able to complete their cycles, and this was compounded with dustcarts in the sense that much of the electric was used in the back of the vehicles because of its crushing activities. The City of London did possess a fully electric fleet but they used small low usage dustcarts to cover a small area. Bromley was a much larger geographical area. Strategies and campaigns were being developed to drive up recycling and reduce contamination specifically with respect to flats.

The Chairman highlighted that the level of fly tipping had increased by 25% and he wondered what was driving this. He suggested that more should be done with public protection and enforcement to crackdown on fly tipping.

The Assistant Director agreed that collaborative work should be undertaken with public protection and enforcement. Some trial campaigns were underway in the Penge and Mottingham areas to try and establish the root causes of fly tipping. A report would come back to the Committee with recommendations. It was noted that the parks security guards had delegated powers to issue PCNs for fly tipping. The Assistant Director assured that LBB would be focusing on developing campaigns to reduce the amount of fly tipping within the borough.

The Chairman asked if the current shortage of HGV drivers was a risk factor for Veolia.  Mr Velmans responded in the affirmative, stating that there was a risk and that in the UK the shortage of HGV drivers was estimated at between  60,000 to 100,000. Veolia in mitigation, had competitive pay rates and attractive bonuses. They had a nationwide scheme that offered a £1500 incentive for new drivers.

The Chairman asked how LBB compared with other boroughs in terms of key metrics. Mr Velmans responded that street cleaning in Bromley was excellent. However, he wanted to see some improvement in terms of waste collections; it was difficult sometimes to compare boroughs because of different geography.

A Member asked if Veolia would work with Idverde to promote recycling. The Assistant Director answered in the affirmative and confirmed that there was synergy and cooperation with service partners in these areas.

It was noted that an award ceremony had been held for street cleaners. The awards were based on referrals from the general public. Awards from the Mayor were well received. 

RESOLVED that the update report and presentation from Veolia be noted.