Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
TUESDAY 22 MAY 2007
CLLR GARY
PORTER, MR
GARY ALDERSON,
MS NICOLA
BEACH AND
MR IAN
DAVIES
Q160 Martin Horwood: What percentage
of the population actually gets that three-bin system?
Ms Beach: I believe it is quite
high. It is about 90% of the population, the houses anyway. With
Uttlesford it is a predominantly rural, quite affluent area. You
have not got high density housing but a mix of housing that would
take three wheeled bins fairly suitably.
Q161 Martin Horwood: It does not
seem practicable in Hammersmith & Fulham!
Ms Beach: No.
Q162 Martin Horwood: You have got
12 district councils within your Partnership?
Ms Beach: That is right.
Q163 Martin Horwood: How many of
them have achieved similar recycling improvements without that
kind of switch but just doing either a promotional campaign or
different waste streams?
Ms Beach: One or two are in the
upper 30s, but it would be fair to say that none have achieved
the significant change that certainly Uttlesford has shown in
the last year without the introduction of this. Braintree, which
has been gradually introducing such a scheme really over the last
five to six years, has shown very high recycling as well. The
comparison with Braintree is, in the areas where they have not
got this scheme they are achieving about half the recycling rate.
I think the others in the Essex district are going to have to
look at either frequency of collection or the type of collection,
or the containers they use. I think the important point to stress
is that Braintree and Uttlesford are the only two districts at
the moment that actually collect food waste at the kerbside. It
is an issue in Essex that we have not yet fully addressed across
the county.
Q164 Martin Horwood: You say that
weekly food waste collection is a key element?
Ms Beach: They do not collect
green waste, which I think is also an important point to draw
out. They have achieved that level of recycling and waste minimisation
without the collection of green waste.
Q165 Martin Horwood: Food waste is
the one which, in public health terms, is always the most concerning.
What is happening in Braintree with food waste?
Ms Beach: Food waste is collected
weekly in Braintree but it is mixed with garden waste, green waste.
Q166 Martin Horwood: That is unusual,
is it not?
Ms Beach: No, that all goes for
composting. It all has to be treated as if it were food waste.
Q167 Martin Horwood: Can I ask about
Chelmsford, where you have said that 81% of the households in
flats are being offered recycling? How do you achieve that in
Chelmsford?
Ms Beach: In Chelmsford there
are about 60,000 homes in the borough and an estimated 6,000 of
those are flats, about a 10% proportion of the housing. I think
Chelmsford's main driver for addressing the flat issue was one
of social inclusion. These are not high-density flats, I must
stress; they are not the same as colleagues' from London and there
are maybe six to 16 flats per block. Chelmsford has addressed
that through bins in the car parks or in the bin storage areas.
It is particularly difficult where the blocks of flats are quite
old, where perhaps when they were first built and designed that
just was not a factor. What Chelmsford does though is very proactively
work with their planning department, so that when new developments
are coming forward, recycling facilities are built into the design.
I think that is really a key factor and something we are working
very hard in Essex across the county to build in.
Q168 Martin Horwood: Do Chelmsford's
recycling officers think they are succeeding? Is it really feeding
through into a flat designed to—-
Ms Beach: Yes, I believe so. From
speaking to them, yes, they do. At the moment I think it would
be fair to say I would perhaps not go so far as to say it is a
material consideration in all planning matters across the county,
but it certainly is a very strong factor. When I spoke to the
Chelmsford recycling team, they were saying that planning officers
require the developers to come forward with that kind of proposal.
Certainly in Essex we have something called the Urban Place Supplement
and the Essex Design Guide, which build into that about sustainability
of all sorts of development, not just on waste, but on water and
energy. We are encouraging developers and advising them on how
to build in these things, in a way that in no way negates away
from their development.
Q169 Martin Horwood: Could I just
ask one last question about the Essex Waste Management Partnership
as a whole? It sounds, on one level, like a good model of joint
working between a county council and lots of district councils
but actually, as you read through your submission, it turns into
a pretty complicated patchwork of different arrangements and services.
Is it really delivering savings, efficiencies and improvements
in performance as a whole?
Ms Beach: I think you have to
distinguish between the collection systems that we have. It would
be fair to say in Essex there has not been full integration of
waste collection between district authorities, but that is being
fully explored in some areas, and I make reference to what we
dub the "Baswood Point Project", which I think is the
first project which is really looking at the opportunities for
efficiencies. The Partnership is about much more strategic working.
In an ideal world, as my colleagues have said, you would not necessarily
start with the patchwork we have got; all of that is from historic
issues, housing need and so on. In an idea world you would perhaps
have more of a generic collection system designed by housing need
and type rather than, if you like, political boundary. The Partnership
itself is working extremely well; it is about delivering strategic
change as well.
Q170 Martin Horwood: What is that?
Ms Beach: What I mean is that
we have got to significantly divert the amount of waste from landfill.
The system that Essex prefers, as a Partnership, is a more sophisticated
system of anaerobic digestion, mechanical biological treatment.
We want higher recycling with a mix of those technologies to do
with the residual waste.
Q171 Martin Horwood: The collection
schemes are still a patchwork. You are not unifying them at the
later stages of the process?
Ms Beach: Yes, and it is important
that the collection systems as they are and the disposal systems
marry together. I believe that in the long run we will see more
integration of collection across districts, and, as I say, that
is certainly being explored by the three authorities I have named
in the paper.
Q172 Martin Horwood: Are there any
policy tools you would recommend to us that would make integration
easier? Certainly in my county's experience there are lots of
financial complications in trying to make that work especially
between counties and districts?
Ms Beach: I think the county/district
relationship, certainly in Essex, is well governed. We have joint
committee schemes and so on. In Essex we are almost acting as
a joint waste authority. That is something we are looking at.
That would be the natural evolution for us to move forward. I
firmly believe you cannot do that until you have got the relationships
and the trust right. You have got to go willingly towards that.
We had that through the joint committees. We are developing intra-authority
agreements. I think an area that does need more exploring is the
joint working between districts, but that again is something I
think districts are starting to look at voluntarily. You have
got the Gershon efficiencies and other drivers there, the Lyons
Review, making these observations and I know district colleagues
are certainly looking at that quite seriously.
Q173 Chair: To what extent are your
collection methods shaped by how the rubbish is disposed of and
recycled and vice versa? How much is your choice of disposal
treatment fixed by how you decide to collect?
Ms Beach: There is an interdependency
there. The county council, we have just recently procured and
awarded in-vessel composting contracts, so that means that district
councils now can collect food waste either separately or in with
garden waste; or we can, as a disposal authority, offer them the
disposal outlet of that. It is very much parallel tracking it.
It would be foolish to select contracts in the knowledge that
they would never be used. Equally, districts need confidence that
the facilities are there for them to use if they are going to
introduce a new material or a change in their collections. I think
the key aspect is one of continuous dialogue, joint working and
forward planning, and that is what we try and do in Essex.
Q174 Mr Olner: Basically I do not
think there is much of a problem with most of your consumers in
an alternate weekly collection for recyclables. I do not think
there is any latent backlash against that at all. There is, however,
a backlash against an alternate weekly collection of the residue
waste. How do you gauge satisfaction from your residents? If the
reaction is not good, how would you respond to that and what would
you do about it?
Cllr Porter: It is not something
we would ever have to deal with because there is absolutely no
way while I am Leader of the Council, unless you people decide
to make it law, that we would ever go down fortnightly waste collections.
I believe most people who pay council tax in this country think
the only thing they get for their rates are the dustbins being
emptied, and if you cannot do that properly in the 21st century
it is a pretty poor show. I do appreciate we are all different.
I think one thing which has clearly come across today is that
one solution will not work for local government; we need to have
the freedom to be able to pick and choose what works best in our
own areas. I think the most reassuring thing from this conversation
is that at least we are all different and we do know what is best
for our own patches. I am not sure what best practice you could
take from these sessions and roll out anywhere else, but if one
piece is that you think weekly collections are something of the
past and fortnightly collections are something to be aspired to
I would strongly urge you to check all the figures, because the
stuff you have been getting this morning, according to different
websites that are supposedly controlled by the authorities we
are talking about, is not correct. Uttlesford, according to its
website, does actually collect green waste in their total. If
you look at all the figures, South Holland, who do not collect
green waste and do a weekly refuse and a weekly recycling service,
do more recycling than any of the authorities you have spoken
to so far.
Q175 Mr Olner: There does not seem
to be a problem about getting people to respond to recycling.
Where there is a huge barrier is people having to leave their
rubbish on the premises that might cause odours, smells or whatever.
If you get a backlash from people about that how would you respond?
Would you go back and educate them, or would you go back to what
they are doing in South Holland and do a weekly collection?
Mr Alderson: The first thing is,
you must have a very comprehensive communication campaign before
you launch the process, with a full 12 months, mass media, face-to-face
road shows and two direct mail shots to get the information across.
You have then got to have the capacity to respond to the calls
when you first put the system in. We created a contact centre
in Mid Beds to handle that initial surge of calls. You have got
to have people who can actually go and see people and help them
make the conversion. In terms of your first question, how do you
gauge customer satisfaction, we carried out three surveys in the
first 12 months of operation: two through a residents' panel,
which is a thousand people representative of the whole population;
and one open to everybody to write in from the districts. In those
figures we were getting 75-80% satisfaction and very little problems.
Q176 Mr Olner: Out of how many coming
in?
Mr Alderson: The first two were
a thousand individuals who responded in each of the two. When
we opened up to the entire population we actually had a very small
response; about 400 or 500 bothered to reply. The first two were
demographically representative and very sound surveys. In the
first two years we received about 300 complaints in the first
year, and 350 in the second year. Those are complaints which have
come through to the council through any route. Clearly the level
of dissatisfaction is higher than that, but I would say the proof
is in the pudding. In Mid Beds the system is very well embedded
and it works. We have low levels of contamination, which is often
an issue and we have very high levels of participation. We feel
we have overcome those issues. Clearly ward members are often
the first point of contact for complainants, and we did a lot
of work to make sure our members were fully informed and re-informed.
As we progressed and positive results came through, they had that
information and feedback to their constituents.
Q177 Chair: Could I just pick up
a point Cllr Porter made, and I would ask the rest of you to comment
on, which is an issue we explored yesterday? How accurate do you
think the data is that local authorities are reporting on their
recycling performance? Are there ways in which the rules can be
tightened up a bit so that there is greater reliability of the
figures that authorities are reporting?
Mr Alderson: I have got great
confidence in the figures I have given you this morning. The figures
I have given are bang up-to-date to 31 March 2007. A lot of the
website information is the previous financial year, because we
are about to go through an external audit by the Audit Commission.
All councils go through this and round about December we have
the league tables published of all the councils. There is a bit
of a time lag between local information becoming nationally available.
I quoted earlier how we looked at the total waste arisings, and
we had not seen an increase in the civic amenity sites waste arisings,
and we had not seen an increase in fly-tipping. Therefore, there
is nowhere else for it to go, so we do feel our figures are quite
robust. In terms of improving the situation, our own Council's
view is that we should not be measuring green waste collection
because we feel green waste can be dealt with at the point of
origination in home composting. By having that as part of your
overall recycling figure some councils do quote "Oh, we achieve
50% recycling", when actually that is 20% paper and 30% of
green waste. I think we share a common view on the green waste
issue.
Ms Beach: Chair, if I may, first,
correct my colleague at the end about Uttlesford collecting green
waste: they do not collect green waste at the kerbside;
that was the point I was making. They do, on occasion, run a bring
system, for weekends only, for people to bring garden waste to
them, so it is not part of the kerbside. The kerbside system alone
has achieved high recycling and significant waste minimisation,
so it does not detract from their performance at all. I would
say, with regard to data, yes, it is a challenge, particularly
for Essex dealing with 12 district councils and the county council's
own 23 civic amenity sites. The reliability of our data I think
is very good. I have great confidence in it. We have never yet
had what we call a "qualified best value indicator"
where the Audit Commission has had concerns and, therefore, qualified
the performance that we have reported publicly but one of the
issues we are looking at in Essex is the way we handle the data
and the speed and effectiveness of how we handle them. I think
it would be fair to say, and I am sure my colleagues behind me
would agree, that at times we probably over-handle the data and
duplicate the handling. I think that is where, in partnership,
we could actually handle that much more effectively. That is something
we are looking at.
Q178 Martin Horwood: Quite a few
of you mentioned that not collecting green waste actually encourages
waste minimisation, but is there not a risk if people have got
large amounts of garden cuttings—you cannot practically
compost all of that, I know that from experience—that you
are just going to send people back to having bonfires more often?
That is not really waste minimisation; it is encouraging bonfires.
Mr Alderson: All I can say, Chair,
is that in Mid Beds we have not experienced any increase in fly-tipping,
any increase in waste going to the tips, or any increase in complaints
of bonfires of that type. We are a very rural area. We do have
some built-up towns but generally if you are generating green
waste you have a garden and, therefore, you can accommodate a
compost bin. Many of our residents have two or three compost bins.
Ms Beach: For Essex, given the
mix of rural and urban even within districts themselves, I think
the Partnership here sees it very much as a mix. It is about encouraging
home composting as much as one reasonably can. We have 23 civic
amenity sites across Essex; they run well, but I am conscious
that they are very dependent on people driving to them, which
is not always a good factor in an environmental sense or, in fact,
for social inclusion for those who are not car owners. I think
it is a combination. What Essex will be concerned about is unlimited
collection of green waste, and I do agree with my colleagues here
that figures are misleading when they are published to make it
sound like we are actually addressing what is in the bin, and
all we are doing is encouraging other waste. I think if it is
managed properly, either through limiting the capacity of the
container or even charging for it, which you can legitimately
do for green garden waste, that is a factor. Certainly in Essex
I think it is a combination of all of those. Coming back to the
point about acceptability of alternate weekly, from my own personal
experience and looking at what is being done in Essex, I would
suggest it is addressing the food waste on a weekly basis that
certainly makes these schemes much more acceptable to the public,
particularly if we have the hot summers we have previously experienced.
Q179 David Wright: Which leads me
very nicely into the health issue. Clearly there has been a significant
amount of debate in the media about the health issues relating
to alternate weekly collection for residual waste. Defra have
said that they do not believe that AWC means more problems in
relation to rats, flies, smells, vermin and potential ill-health.
Mr Alderson, you have got an alternate weekly collection for residual
waste. What level of complaints do you get in terms of consumers
complaining about food waste that is stored for two weeks? What
are the issues in relation to whether people are able to manage
that process well in terms of double-wrapping food and cleaning
their bins out?
Mr Alderson: As I mentioned earlier,
we had 300 complaints in the first year and 350 in the second
year, which included last July's very, very hot summer. This is
where wheelie bins are of course very helpful; because of the
close-fitting closed lid, you keep out any vermin and flies etc.
That is a benefit of the wheelie bin system.
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