Will Brent Council Council's vital services to residents be improved by these proposals going to Cabinet on Monday?

 

A process with major repercussions for the future of basic services provided to residents and worth millions of pounds will be discussed at Brent Cabinet on Monday.

Brent Council synchronised the end dates of various Public Realm contracts so as to enable the Council to consider ways of Redefining Local Services (RSL). Of the contracts above the Veolia contract is the most costly.

Following an initial consultation over the provision of local servives the Council proposes to adopt a 'specialist contracts delivery model with low to moderate levels of insourcing [the council providing the service rather than external contractors].' 

This is a lower level of insourcing that some Labour councillors hoped for. Insourcing would involve TUPE from existing providers.

 The objectives of RSL are listed:

The Final RLS Delivery Model will aim to achieve the following overarching objectives: 

 
· A neighbourhood approach to managing local issues to meet the needs of local areas
· A borough-wide approach to managing our assets and infrastructure (e.g. highways, street lighting) to ensure investment is spent well
· A specialist contracts approach for outsourced services
· Improved contract management and monitoring for contracted services
· An intelligence-led approach to the deployment of resources
· Integrated deployment of environmental enforcement services across public realm
· Greater responsiveness to addressing issues and problems in the public realm
· Better digital customer interface with real-time information and issue reporting
· Additional council capacity for continuous service improvement and innovation
· Focusing specialist officers where they can add the greatest value, with more triaging between generalist and specialist roles
· Deliver improved Social Value outcomes via our Social and Ethical Procurement Policy, including: striving for carbon neutrality by 2030 and enhancing nature and biodiversity; the number of local jobs created (where appropriate for the contract), including focus on disadvantaged groups; and the number of SMEs and third sector organisations that benefit from the procurement exercises.

 The service benefits are set out:

The Final RLS Delivery Model offers the following service benefits:

· Ongoing funding for the highways reactive maintenance gang based at the Depot, tasked with 20% of reactive highways repairs which arise from customer reports, in order to provide a more flexible and responsive service than the current highways services contract. No additional cost as this has already been funded from within R & E budgets). 

· Insourcing the Education, Communication and Outreach (ECO) team (6 staff) would give the Council direct responsibility for communication, education and outreach to help address our considerable waste, climate emergency and circular economy objectives and challenges. 3 of these staff are already on LGPS with the additional cost of insourcing estimated at £52k per annum. 

· Insourcing the Head Park Warden and 4 Park Wardens would enable better integration of education and enforcement across the whole public realm in Brent. It would also enable a more strategic and holistic approach to stakeholder management and community engagement of park interest groups and park users and help to increase participation and volunteering in parks. All these staff are on existing LGPS via an Admission Agreement with the Council but there would be additional cost estimated at £26k per annum to cover Brent’s higher employers’ pension contribution (35% compared to Veolia’s 20%). 

· The Pre-Notice to Owner (NTO) Correspondence work-stream (informal parking appeals) could be incorporated back into the larger Parking back-office Notice Processing Team (formal parking appeals). The addition of these two individuals would be absorbed within the structure without any need to change either structure or management capacity. The additional cost of insourcing is estimated at £32k per annum. There has historically been discomfort that outsourcing this function results in a situation where the contractor is in effect "marking its own homework” as it is issuing the PCNs and then answering the challenges to those same PCNs. Moving this service back in house could provide: 

‒ Greater transparency on the activities of the contractor
‒ More control on how policy is applied to the cancellation of PCNs
‒ Improved quality of Pre-NTO correspondence
‒ Greater consistency between Pre and Post NTO communications with
customers
‒ Greater flexibility across the wider PCN correspondence team to deal with
surges in workload 

· In-sourcing the Tree Surveying function, tree database and the raising of
tree works orders would provide the Council with greater strategic and
financial control of the Arboriculture Services contract, improved planning
and completion of works and achieve better value for money from our tree
maintenance budget. This is estimated to cost an additional £30k per
annum, comprising £20k in staff costs and up to £10k in annual tree
database license costs. Staff time required to maintain the database would
be covered from existing resources, and/or as an element of the TUPE
transfer to the Council of the existing surveyor post. 

· Creating a stronger highways inspection regime - 1 additional highways
inspector post would significantly address the lack of resource for highways
inspections noted in section 4 of this report. Total cost £43k per annum.

 

Street cleaning, litter, fly-tipping, waste collection and recycling are one of the main concerns of residents so dealt with in my detail here.

One of the proposals is for an 'Integrated Street Cleaning and Waste Contract' that combines street cleansing and waste collection but separates waste collection from recycling. A discussion with potential providers was in favour of such a separation. The Cabinet paper outlines the main requirements:

Street Cleansing Services 

 
· Provide comprehensive, seven-day cleansing services that deliver high performance standards across all land use types and which maximise the amount of waste segregated for reuse, recycling, composting and recovery
· Provide a ‘Clear All’ service on designated roads ensuring the removal of all waste in these areas, regardless of the source material
· Provide and manage receptacles, including litter bins, ensuring that they never become full or overflowing
· Provide a fly tipping removal service which proactively reduced the amount of fly tipped waste and delivers the highest possible performance standards
· Provide a graffiti and fly posting removal service that meets EPA standards

 

 Waste and Recycling Collections 

 
· Provide a scheduled residual, recycled, food and garden waste collection service that maximises the amount of waste segregated for reuse, recycling and composting, while minimising contamination of target materials to improve the quality of the separately collected waste streams
· Provide an assisted collection service to meet the needs of those households who are unable to present household waste and recyclables at standard collection points
· Provide a special collections service for bulky household waste that maximises the amount of waste segregated for reuse, recycling and recovery

 

Winter Maintenance 

 
· Provide an effective winter service which ensures that safe passage along all main highways, priority routes and other relevant land use types is not endangered by ice and/or snow during the designated Winter Service Period
· Provide and manage all salt bins, ensuring that they are stocked and available for use during the designated Winter Service Period to reduce risk to residents

Other Services 

 
· Emergency and out of hours response
· Waste container management and delivery
· Customer care and satisfaction, including response to service requests and complaints.

The potential for further insourcing in the future is noted:

Under the Final RLS Delivery Model, there would be potential to insource further functions from the proposed Integrated Street Cleansing & Waste Contract during the main contract term, as detailed in paragraph 6.12 of this report, and to insource the full grounds maintenance service after the next contract ends in 2027/28, should the council’s finances improve. There was broad support for such further insourcing in the best value duty consultation response.The council would also retain an interest in considering insourcing the full street cleansing service at the end of the main contract term of the proposed Integrated Street Cleansing & Waste contract

The Timetable:

The full report can be found HERE