Cabinet to consider new contracts for waste collection and street cleansing

Release Date:  25-Jan-2010

Bristol City Council Cabinet will be asked to approve arrangements to tender for new contracts for waste collection and street cleansing at their meeting on 28 January. 

“Setting up new contracts gives us a great opportunity to work towards reaching our ambitious goals, including moving towards ending untreated landfill waste disposal and making Bristol the cleanest large city in the UK,” said Councillor Gary Hopkins, Cabinet Member for Environment and Community Safety.

The waste collection and cleansing contract must be awarded by April 2011 in order to begin operation in October 2011, and the waste disposal contract must be signed by 1st February 2011, to begin in April 2011.

“We have already achieved a great deal but we are determined to keep improving our services and to forge ahead as being one of the cleanest and greenest major cities in the UK,” said Councillor Hopkins. “Our future waste and cleansing contract is fundamental to us achieving our ambitious targets.”

The Council adopted a long term strategy in the Autumn to help redesign services to meet and exceed the challenging Government targets and to help inform this re-tendering of the Council’s Waste Services contracts.  Targets included in the strategy were:

• To increase waste recycling and composting from its then level of 36% to 50% by December 2010 and eventually to ending untreated landfill waste disposal all together (because of the cost to the environment and to council tax payers).
• To seek to reduce the annual average household waste to 577 kgs per household in 2009/10, to 556 kgs by 2010/11 and to 468 kgs by 2015.
• To be the cleanest major city in the UK by December 2012.

“These drivers will be of prime importance when we decide how we award the contracts,” said Cllr Hopkins. “To ensure the city uses the right contracting process to get the waste and cleansing services we need and at the right price, we have asked potential contractors, the Citizens Panel and other key groups and organisations for feedback. We have tried to encompass this feedback as far as we can within our budgets.”

For example, nearly 40% of residents would like to have plastic picked up as part of the weekly collections. “Because of the bulk of this waste, this would have been prohibitively expensive to collect in the past.  Technology is changing however and with the new contracts we hope to arrange this in the future,” said Cllr Hopkins.  “In fact we will be running a trial of this service within the next few months to establish public reaction and the use they make of it.”

If Cabinet approve the report, council officers will then place notices in the Official Journal of the European Union inviting bids for the tenders in May and June 2010. From companies responding to this a restricted list of companies will be chosen to invite to tender.

Officers are recommending the waste collection and cleansing contract be evaluated at a split of 60% for price and 40% for quality, in order to get the maximum from the service within the allocated budget.

The separate waste disposal contract, worth around £8.5 million, which is currently held by WRG and Cory Environmental, is due to come to an end in April 2011.

“It is essential we do everything we can to make sure this new contract meets all our requirements to get the best waste and recycling collections and street cleansing for the most cost effective price,” says Councillor Hopkins. “Our officers have already spent the past eighteen months preparing for this and I am confident we have got the right balance of price versus quality. I will be recommending to my Cabinet colleagues that they approve the options in the report presented to them so that we can begin to go ahead with the Restricted Tender procedure.”

SITA were awarded the current seven-year waste collection and street cleansing contract in October 2001.Currently SITA manage the collection of residual waste, organic (food and garden) waste and recycling from the 180,000 households in the city. They also undertake street cleansing and associated functions such as the removal of fly-tipped waste, graffiti and waste on land.

Disposal of residual waste is currently a separate contract that is due to expire in April 2011. Bristol City Council operate the two transfer stations and Household Waste Recycling Centres adjoining the transfer stations, but the disposal of the waste after transfer is contracted out to the Waste Recycling Group (WRG) and Cory Environmental.
 

Author:  Catherine Frankpitt / Vicky O'Loughlin tel. 0117 922 3463

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