Postponed Scrutiny Committee will now discuss recycling and street cleansing proposals on Thursday 15th December

Papers for Brent Council meetings are usually posted a week before the meeting in order to enable the public to read them beforehand. This enables the public to request to speak at a meeting if they feel there are issues in the papers about which tey have questions or a view.

Yesterday I noticed that Tuesday's papers for the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee had not been published meaning that councillors and public had little time to read them. In fact, the Committee usually discusses them at a pre-meeting before the actual meeting so councillors would have had even less time to get their head round the issues.

The meeting was due to discuss controversial changes to the recycling service and street cleansing.

I protested to the Council via Twitter and called for the postponement to enable proper perusal of the documents. After interchanges this was conceded.

 

From Wembley Matters: Dec 8^th Brent Council: papers for Tuesday's Scrutiny only just published less than a week before the meeting. Insufficient time for members of the public & likely committee members to adequately scrutinise far-reaching changes to street cleansing, recycling etc. Meeting should be postponed.

 

From Wembley Matters to Cllr Conneely and Cllr Sheth (Chairs of Scrutiny) and Brent Council’s CEO: This is no way to treat Scrutiny. Particularly on such a controversial topic.

 

From Brent Council: Dec 9^th Thank you for raising this concern about the delayed publication of some of the scrutiny papers for which we apologise. All papers have now been published in full and can be viewed on the council website.

 

In the circumstances, to enable residents and the committee to have the usual amount of time to review the content, the meeting has been postponed. The rearranged meeting will now take place on Thursday 15 December.

 

From Wembley Matters: Thank you. A good decision.

 

This is the main paper for the Resources and Public Realm Scrutinny Committee now to be held on Thursday 15th December:

Redefining Local Services: Update on the Integrated Street Cleansing, Waste Collections and Winter Maintenance Services Contract Procurement Programme PDF 422 KB

For Recycling the Council pronounces its 8 week trial of alternate weeks reycling a success The first week a paper sack collection for paper and card and the second the normal blue bin collection minus paper and card.:

The results from the eight-week trial have been analysed and the trial is considered to have been a success when measured against the following key critical success factors

• The set out % for the sacks (the number of households putting their bluesack out with paper and card)
• Contamination levels within the sacks
• Contamination in the existing, blue-lidded recycling bin (including levels of paper/card)

They reject a weekly 'twin' collection of both sack and blue bin as too expensive and say it would mean cuts in other services. Officers recommend that the Preferred Option (alternate collections) be included in the final Integrated Contract.

They argue this method will mean less contamination of waste and thus increase recycling rates and save money.

The officers give more weight to the Face to Face meetings they held (which favoured to proposed system) than the On-Line Consultation which rejected it. Nearly 8 times as many residents took part in the On-line consultaion compared with Face to Face at the Roadshows. Officers felt this was because they saw the sacks and were able to talk to Council employees about the new system.

The majority of the On-Line consultees wanted to keep the present system:
 

The suggested changes in the Street Cleansing Contract are for a switch from a 'frequency led system' (Translation: How often your street is cleaned on a regulat basis) to an 'Intelligence Led System' when new officers in teams and residents let thecontractor know when a street needs cleaning.

The approach will include six new, dedicated rapid response teams in each Brent Connect Area (with two in Wembley) which the council will be able to task directly to address any ad hoc issues arising and to target hotspots.  

Data management will also be improved within the new contract with a new dedicated Digital Manager post sitting with the contractor and a live dashboard shared with the Council’s client team which we will jointly monitor daily and which the council will analyse for trends to determine locations which require changing levels of resource. The new regime will therefore be flexible allowing resources to be reallocated where required across the borough.

This comes with a reduction in frequency of the cleaning of residential streets: (Note DM and DL and North Circular)

I could not find a list of DH, DM and DL roads or definitions but will try and find out tomorrow.  Again On-line responders were more likely to oppose the changes, though not as strongly as for Recycling.
 

Residents made some suggestions on improving street cleansing and the officers responded:

 

Additional measures include the Education Team, currently with Veolia, being brought in-house and a new free, bookable small items collection service would be introduced. The  service would collect:

• Textiles
• Small electrical appliances
• Household batteries
• Paint
• Used coffee pods

Consultation Findings LINK