New contracts for domestic waste collection have been signed off by three Kent local authorities, Maidstone, Ashford and Swale, with the company Suez. The contract is worth £19mn across mid-Kent. For Ashford, it will last eight years.
Biffa services replaced by Suez
Until this week, Ashford bins were collected by Biffa Municipal Ltd, with commendable regularity, every week for food waste, and alternating fortnightly between green bins for recyclables, and grey bins for all the rest. No complaints.
Now there is a torrent of complaints as in many streets no collection took place on the appointed date. Not only here in Ashford but in the other contracted towns as well, according to Kentonline:
- Sittingbourne. “Residents have reported rubbish piling up on the streets just days after a new waste collector has been brought in.”
- Swale. “Fed-up residents feel ‘forgotten’ as rubbish piles up in their street amidst continuing problems with a new bin collection service.”
Ashford teething problem?
Residents here in Ashford began calling the district council offices. At first, they replied that the crews in Ashford were adapting better than crews in the other towns. But they were having some bad luck in that three lorries had broken down.
Then some residents reported that the reply from customer service was that “the whole road had been recorded as not having left their bins out” which was completely false as the full bins have been standing on pavements for four days now. “If we wait until the 19th for collection we’ll end up with rubbish all over the street. I’m already having to use my garden waste bin for refuse.”
Throughout the morning more residents phoned customer service at the council office concerned that the road was misrecorded as not having bins put out. They advised more people to telephone. One even got a reply, “if you still haven’t had a collection by the end of tomorrow please let us know and we’ll continue to escalate this for you with our contractor.”
Another resident had booked and paid for a special collection (wardrobe and old mattress) but they wouldn’t take it because it was not on their computer records.
Lorry fleet reduced from 12 to 8
Someone then spoke to one of the lorry drivers who said that they only have eight lorries instead of the previous 12, and staff have left in the transition to the new contract. They now have 27,000 missed bins to collect in three weeks.
A further problem for the lorries is that the new design has a ‘food pod’ behind the cabin at the side, rather than at the back, for the contents of the food caddies. But this pod cannot be used where there are parked cars (which is almost every street hereabouts). So, one of the team has to walk up the street with a large bin and collect the food waste from the caddies and then tip in the pod when there is a gap in the parked cars.
Manual ‘food pod’ collection
Residents started to ring the actual company, having found a number on a website. “Not that we who pay council tax should have to be chasing after their contractors.” But, although the company is logging them to pass on to their head office, their advice is to keep phoning the local council office.
By now residents with memories of London rubbish which piled up when the Greater London Council was devolved to the boroughs began mentioning the danger of rats. But others think the urban foxes will get to the bins first.
Council justification for new contractor
As of this week, Kent residents affected by all this are not impressed by the performance of the new contractors. What were some of the arguments for the new contract as stated in the letter to residents:
- The new contractor also intends to use a small number of electric vehicles which, combined with route and round upgrades, amounts to a 16-tonne reduction in carbon emissions.
- The new vehicle fleet has the point of food waste at the side of the truck, showing a clear separation between the different types of waste collected.
- The new contract will help in reducing the council’s carbon footprint as the new vehicles are Euro VI which has lower emissions.
- It saves money to go into a partnership of three authorities.
Questionable assumptions?
Is this just a crass cost-cutting exercise that has resulted in a chaotic reduced service? It seems as if points 1 and 2 in this list are causing the most problems. One cannot help thinking that too much of the decision-making was made indoors, eyes on the spreadsheets and computer screens. Who did the pilot rounds to time the actual possible performance in those actual vehicles, in these actual streets with their parked cars? What happens in a contract if some basic assumptions turn out to be false?
Suez on its website states that it operates in 300 places in the UK. It is a French-owned company that bought out Veolia for £2bn in 2022. It boasts:
“We understand the pressure to reduce carbon emissions and meet demanding targets for recycling and recovery, which is why we have pioneered new initiatives – such as developing resident recycling incentive schemes and introducing computerised collection systems to improve the efficiency of our collections service.”
Maybe some wrong algorithms were fed into those computers that do not fit suburban Kent towns.
