Agenda and minutes

Councillor Margaret Bell (NWBC)

Councillor John Horner (WCC)

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The public reports referred to are available on the Warwickshire Web https://democracy.warwickshire.gov.uk/uuCoverPage.aspx?bcr=1

None.

The Chair welcomed Councillor Sue Markham as the Portfolio Holder from Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council replacing Councillor Kyle Evans.

The minutes were approved as a correct record.

Andrew Pau informed the partnership that the first two quarters of the financial year had an increase in tonnage of recycling and reuse and that composting rates slightly decreased by just over 1500 tonnes. Seasonal changes had an impact on the kerbside collected green waste and green waste from household recycling centres (HWRC). Green waste charging in Stratford District and North Warwickshire Borough would have also impacted this. Recycling, composting and reuse rate decreased by just over 1%. Landfill increased by around 1000 tonnes; this meant that more money had to be spent on disposing this extra tonnage. The extra waste reduced the overall recycling and composting rate. Household waste collected increased because of Covid-19 and so landfill and energy recovery were higher too.

Andrew Pau presented the estimated performance numbers for 2021/22.

There is expected to be a reduction in the recycling/reuse rate to 49.5% and there is an average 10 kilograms increase in waste collected per household in Warwickshire. 

In response to Councillor Sarah Millar, Andrew Pau stated that there was displacement of waste between offices to home working, this has seen an increase in waste collected at the kerbside and a reduction in commercial waste produced.

The Chair stated that an education or communication programme may help with this extra waste.

In response to Councillor Kathryn Lawrence, Andrew Pau confirmed that the total population data for 2021/22 is the same as the previous year as the new population figure has not been released yet, it is expected population will increase by a couple of per cent which would reduce the average tonnage per household.

Dan Green stated that consumer packaging filled up recycling bins quickly which could have led to people putting recyclable material in the residual waste bin. He queried whether any material analysis was done. The Chair concurred with this. Ruth Dixon said that a composition breakdown was planned for March 2022 and a report was planned for June 2022.

Andrew Pau stated that cardboard filled up the bins quickly but that maybe residents could leave this as side waste. In response to this point raised by Andrew Pau, Richard Dobbs stated that recycling collectors will not accept wet cardboard as it is sodden and would be rejected, black bags left on the side would also be left behind due to refuse collectors not knowing what is in them.

Ruth Dixon suggested that as people left furlough and started working again, recycling likely became less of a priority for them to spend their time on.

Andrew Pau informed the partnership that the National Resources and Waste Strategy had gone through two rounds of consultation with the major pillars being - the deposit return scheme, extended producer responsibility and consistency in recycling services. DEFRA said that they had over 900 responses to the second round of the consultation and it was taking longer than anticipated to go through the responses in detail. A response was expected in the first quarter of 2022. The Environment Bill had been approved and received royal assent, which was good as this was the underpinning piece of legislation that allowed the regulation and guidance to be written. DEFRA were anticipating a further consultation with local authorities and others about what the regulation would actually mean in practice. In their latest budget statement, central government allocated large sums of money (£300 million) for the implementation of weekly food waste collection by 2025.

Ruth Dixon added that the local joint municipal waste management strategy which describes everything Warwickshire councils will do to reduce waste, recycle more and manage all of the waste for the next five or so years was up for discussion and development. An officer task and finish group is being set up to start in January 2022 to update and go through data collected, think about upcoming legislation, plan services including HWRCs, consider what neighbouring authorities and other two-tier authorities were doing ahead of the strategy’s development. Input from elected members and other stakeholders will be sought for the strategy and the partnership would be kept updated.

Andrew Pau added that an improved plan of the HWRC would be done separately to the strategy due to the delay with central government.

Stratford & Warwick

Julie Lewis informed the partnership that Stratford District were proposing to stop the garden waste collection service for 2 weeks. There were staff shortages due to illness and vacancies, but all services remained running normally. Work was ongoing in the mobilisation of the new joint-contract and conversations are on-going with the County Council on food waste. There were communications ongoing with fly tipping for both districts. Warwick District were addressing issues with student properties, including those not having wheeled recycling bins and needing their waste collected two to three times a week. Warwick District also held a public competition to name their new road sweepers. 

Rugby

Dan Green informed the partnership that they were gearing up for Christmas and will suspend garden waste collection for a couple of weeks; residents were made aware of this with bin tags. They had staff shortages. One of the biggest current challenges was collecting from alleyways behind terraced houses as these were becoming unsafe for staff as they badly needed repairing; these alleyways are not vehicle accessible.

A litter picking campaign will start soon and an online campaign to gain interest will start soon too. Rugby Borough qualified for some levelling up funding through their IT department to look at digitalising in their waste collection information and providing better information for customer service colleagues so they could help residents who ring up. Dan Green will report back once the plan has been developed.

Nuneaton & Bedworth

Glen McGrandle informed the partnership that they had a successful recruitment drive to fill their staff vacancies for refuse collectors and they should start in early 2022. The Omicron variant was being monitored in case it affected their resources. The garden waste collection service subscription was now live, and the placement scheme with Oakwood went well too. Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough will evaluate an enforcement contract that expires in January 2022 and this will be awarded to third party provider. Work was going well with waste crime and detection as well. Covid-19 signage was on the refuse vehicles. All Christmas and New Year campaigns media briefings had gone out to notify residents. The climate change group was ongoing to hopefully cut their carbon footprint in the future.

North Warwickshire

Richard Dobbs informed the partnership that North Warwickshire were also preparing for Christmas and they suspended their garden waste collection for a month. They were still having issues with HGV driver shortages, so a review was undertaken to align themselves better with what the market was providing. North Warwickshire were the winners of the national Best Performing Refuse Service and the Most Improved Transport Fleet Maintenance. They were also looking at powering their vehicles on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO).

The Chair and Dan Green noted that Coventry’s refuse collectors were due to go on strike over pay conditions.

Warwickshire

Ruth Dixon informed the partnership that they were making sure that they were fully staffed for Christmas as well as having working provisions in place for safe working with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Ruth Dixon stated that the on-site HWRC satisfaction survey lasted from November until the first weekend of December 2021 with 1319 people being spoken to face to face at HWRCs across the county. There was over a 95% satisfaction rate for the HWRCs. The lowest score was for the signage and the team will carry out a review of this. The full report from the contractor who carried out the survey will have full details on every response, so they could look at all comments. 96-97% were happy with the HWRCs, the team will look for any negative comments about the HWRCs to improve them. Most participants visited the HWRCs monthly, booked a visit slot the day before visiting, and booked their slot online with EventBrite; residents who did not book through the web or app booked through the Customer Service Centre. Any problems people found with booking would be investigated as most people supported the booking system remaining, but some had suggestions for improvements. 20% of people did not support the continuation of the booking system. An online recycling centre survey was live online for all residents, the survey asks residents who recently visited a HWRC similar questions to the ones asked in person. As people can be more forward when anonymous, the survey may have more negative comments. Residents who have not used the HWRCs can also complete the survey. This survey will end 9^th January 2022 and members of the partnership should circulate it to their residents to get the biggest response. The data from this survey would be analysed fully in January 2022 and the report and infographic will be circulated with full results presented at the next meeting. Ruth Dixon committed to circulating the link to the HWRC customer satisfaction survey and this is provided below: https://ask.warwickshire.gov.uk/insights-service/hwrc21/

Ruth Dixon stated that all the HWRCs will be closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.

In response to Councillor Ian Shenton. Ruth Dixon agreed to share initial survey slides and results with the partnership, but members should be aware that these are not fully analysed yet and may be subject to change.

In response to Councillor Millar’s query about what the possible improvements with the booking system might be, Ruth Dixon explained this will not be known until the data is fully analysed but suggested an example could be using an alternative to EventBrite as residents needed to enter their address every time they booked.

Andrew Pau stated that most Warwickshire authorities had declared a climate emergency and meetings were ongoing.

Andrew explained that, using the Zero Waste Scotland model, a table had been put together showing the carbon impact as a waste disposal authority and this was shown to the group at the last meeting. Overall, the table showed the importance of waste management as a service area in terms of contributing to carbon and the need to focus on reducing carbon in this service area.

Each collection authority provided information on the amount of diesel they used for waste collection which was converted using the Scotland model. This showed an impact of 4000 tonnes of carbon in the service area. Andrew Pau reiterated that the Scotland model had limitations but was freely available.

In response to the Chair, Andrew Pau stated that HWRCs were not included because work was still being done on this with carbon emissions and burning fossil fuels. Carbon emissions from HWRC were in scope one and in the future, they would be presented separately. This report was a mixture of scope one (authorities carrying out own work) and scope three emissions (mixture of things ongoing on the side).

In response to Glen McCrandle, Andrew Pau stated that there was no known ‘league’ table showing carbon emissions from other waste authorities; but, the LGA produced a table and have a waste collection model that took diesel emissions into account and this was being used to support climate change work.

In response to Councillor Shenton, Andrew Pau agreed to share the slides with the partnership.

• Progress on the review of the update to the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy (including a review of targets)
• Full detail of the face to face and online HWRC surveys

16^th March 2022

15^th June 2022

16^th March 2022

15^th June 2022