To consider the 2016/17 outturn and 2017/18 quarter 1 performance update on the services provided by Ubico.

31.1           The report of the Head of Community Services, circulated at Pages No. 22-31, provided Members with an interim update on the Ubico contract for waste and recycling, street cleaning and grounds maintenance services.  Members were asked to consider the 2016/17 outturn and the 2017/18 Quarter 1 performance update.

31.2           The Head of Community Services explained that the 2016/17 annual Ubico report provided to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee in May 2017 had not included Quarter 4 figures due to the timings of the report.  It had been agreed that, going forward, reports would be prepared for the July Committee meetings to enable full year performance figures to be included and to allow for comparison year on year.  Members had requested that an interim report on the performance of Ubico be provided to the September meeting of the Committee, given that the next annual report was not due until July 2018.  The high level figures were set out at Page No. 24 of the report and Members who had attended the seminar following the roll-out of the new waste collection service in April would be aware that there had been some issues.  Table 2 at Paragraph 3.3.4 of the report showed 2,034 missed bins in Quarter 1 of 2017/18 which surpassed the figure for the previous year; it was noted that there had been 2,240 missed collections for the whole of 2016/17 so this was a significant reduction in performance.  Whilst this was common after a service change, any issues were expected to be resolved, and performance to return to normal, within a two month period which had not been the case.  At the end of Quarter 1, Officers had met with Ubico to agree an improvement plan which was outlined at Page No. 25, Paragraph 3.3.8 of the report and there had been a considerable improvement in recent weeks.  Whilst 150 missed collections per week was a very small percentage of the 86,000 collections across the Borough, for the residents affected by repeated missed collections, this was an unacceptable level of service.  Ubico had put considerable resource into the Tewkesbury Borough contract to ensure that the issue was addressed and he was pleased to report there had been 78 missed bins in the last week so it was a steady decline.  With regard to grounds maintenance, the Head of Community Services recognised this as an area of concern as there seemed to be no consistency in the work being undertaken or the monitoring of the contract.  He was in the process of advertising for a dedicated resource to work with the grounds maintenance supervisors at Ubico to come up with an action plan to address the situation.  It was noted that there were currently no meaningful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for grounds maintenance which made it difficult for the Council to hold the contractor to account.  He hoped to see a considerable improvement in this area over the next six to 12 months, in time for the next growing season.  Whilst these were the two areas of concern, it was not all bad news and Page No. 24 of the report showed that recycling had improved for Quarter 1 of 2017/18 with levels above average for the county.

31.3           The Environment and Waste Policy Officer explained that Ubico had been carrying out frontline refuse and recycling collections for the Council for the past three years and there had been a significant operational change in April 2017.  As the KPIs were currently being reviewed as part of the audit work on client monitoring, the Ubico Commissioner report, attached at Appendix 1 to the report, was in the old format and the collection tonnages had been updated since it had been produced with the most recent figures included at Page No. 24, Paragraph 3.2.3 of the report.  Whilst she acknowledged the problems with missed bins collections, the report showed that people were recycling more and sending less to landfill; for Quarter 1 of 2017/18, the residual waste per household for Tewkesbury Borough was 93kg compared to a county average of 113kg and the percentage household waste reused, recycled and composted was 58.44% for Tewkesbury Borough with a county average of 57.92%.  

31.4           The Contracts Manager (Collection and Street Scene West) from the Joint Waste Team drew attention to Page No. 24, Paragraph 3.3.4 of the report, which set out the type of missed bins and it was noted that the most common was food waste.  Whilst there had been no change to the way that service was delivered from a residents’ perspective, there was now a separate food waste vehicle for those collections with new crews, rounds and drivers who were not always fully familiar with the areas.  As food waste was no longer collected at the same time as refuse, some bins were being reported as missed when the crew had not actually been to collect them.  Residents had been reminded via social media to ensure their bins were out by 0700 hours for the different crew collections.  A large number of garden waste collections had also been missed; this was a paid service which had led to frustration for residents and 50 people had been issued with refunds since April at a cost of £430. In terms of other factors leading to the missed collections, whilst some were as a result of the changes to rounds, in other cases people had not been included on the Ubico collection list; this was being resolved by Customer Services and Ubico and would be further eradicated when the sticker system was introduced next year.  Members were informed that, although there were three garden waste vehicles, the rounds were dedicated to two, with the third being split when needed; round design was being addressed by Ubico.  In response to garden crews not always finishing the rounds, she explained that there had been occasions when only two vehicles were being used due to driver shortages; however, Ubico was maintaining three garden waste crews to cope with elevated levels of garden waste and to ensure rounds were completed through the summer and into autumn.  The Managing Director of Ubico recognised that there was a national driver shortage but any crew shortages would be due to sickness or a ‘no-show’ agency driver.  This was more of a problem in August when people were on holiday and, as such, there was a greater reliance on agency drivers.  Whilst operational decisions may need to be taken on the day to try to complete the rounds, Ubico always ensured rounds were crewed.  The Contracts Manager confirmed that an improvement plan was in place and Ubico had provided extra supervision in areas where there had been difficulties.  The Head of Community Services pointed out that the driver issue may present a budget pressure for the Council in due course.  Some local authorities were offering an enhancement to drivers and, whilst Tewkesbury Borough Council offered competitive rates of pay, it was important that experienced drivers were retained.  This would be kept under close review going forward.

31.5           With regard to bin deliveries it was noted that Ubico had run out of bins on more than one occasion, impacting on lead times and resources.  In accordance with the improvement plan, a person had been appointed to be responsible for maintaining stock levels and extra space had been identified at the depot for storage.  Changes had also been made to the bulky waste service which had resulted in a reduction in waiting times from three months to between two and four weeks.  This was not directly related to Ubico and was more about working with resources and managing demand.  Moving on to street cleaning, the Joint Waste Team would be carrying out a review later in the month which would look at the type of request being received by the Council and forwarded to Ubico to see if they could be dealt with more efficiently.  Not everything reported was the responsibility of the Council and therefore they were not all jobs for Ubico, for instance, some may be issues for highways or private landlords.  It was hoped that the work would be completed by the end of Quarter 3.  It was noted that the figures at Appendix 1 showed 151 reports in respect of street cleaning/litter in Quarter 1 of 2017/18, an increase from 141 in 2016/17, but a lot were duplicate reports, or required no action, so the information was not a true reflection.  In terms of fly-tipping, there had been a reduction in the number of reports sent to Ubico for investigation which could be due to the proactive work being carried out by the enforcement team.  Whilst Tewkesbury Borough Council was only responsible for removing fly-tips from public highways and Council land, other reports still needed to be processed and referred on; of the 234 reports in Quarter 1 of 2017/18 only 106 were the Council’s responsibility which was the same as the previous year.  Members were advised that there had been 21 formal complaints in Quarter 1 of 2017/18, which was quite low in all areas with the exception of failure to provide service e.g. repeat missed bins.  There had been two reports of damage to property but these had been investigated using the new CCTV equipment on the vehicles and, whilst one had been upheld, the other had demonstrated that the crew had not been there at the time the damage had occurred.

31.6           At the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting in May, Members had requested more information on financial performance and attention was drawn to the report at Appendix 2 which gave an overview of the waste, recycling and streetscene budgets and the current position to date.  This report was also taken to the Joint Waste Committee.  The Quarter 3 of 2016/17 forecast was an overspend of £28,000, however, the year-end outturn was more positive with an actual outturn of £7,801 overspend due to staff costs in refuse and recycling.  The Quarter 1 of 2017/18 outturn was an overall £8,000 overspend which was leading to a projection of £40,000 by year-end; however, Ubico had indicated that it was managing this and would reduce the overspend during the year as it had done previously.

31.7           In terms of upcoming work, the Environment and Waste Policy Officer indicated that improved communications had been identified as a key area in both the Member Seminar and the work done with Ubico to date.  She was currently involved in a project with the Asset Manager to develop a bin procurement strategy to ensure there was a framework in place as opposed to making one-off purchases.  Work was also underway on an online forms project in order to make them simpler and clearer and the back office systems were being amended to improve communication between the Council and Ubico operational staff, and between the Council and residents.  The first stage of this project would go live in September.  Ubico was also working with the Council to support the introduction of a garden waste licence system in April 2018 which would provide customers with stickers to place on their bins to identify who had paid for the service.  The joint review of the commercial waste service was also in progress.  She recognised that there had been some problems but everyone was working together to get them resolved and the reduction in the number of missed bin collections to below 100 per week demonstrated the improvements being made.

31.8           The Managing Director of Ubico reiterated that one of the actions in the improvement plan agreed with Ubico was to reduce the number of missed bin collections to less than 100 per week by the end of August with a further 50% reduction by the end of October; with 78 missed bin collections in the previous week, these targets were being achieved and the next challenge would be to maintain this performance.  In terms of the resources deployed by Ubico to address the issues, he indicated that he had gone out with a crew to undertake a day of supervision which had been beneficial in terms of identifying why bins might be missed.  As part of this, he had sent individuals to areas where more than one bin collection had been missed since April to look at the property and talk to residents to establish why.  He had insisted that the managers and supervisors knock on doors and apologise to residents where there had been an unacceptable amount of missed collections.  He was pleased the action taken so far was having an effect but accepted there was more to be done and he provided assurance that he would keep pressure on the service to maintain the current level of performance and to make further improvements.

31.9           A Member accepted that the change to rounds had been significant and some level of disruption was to be expected; however, repeat missed bins were a concern and he questioned if this was still an issue five months on.  The Contracts Manager explained that, whilst the number of missed bins had reduced, it was still occurring.  The Customer Services team had been asked to email the depot directly when they were reported, as well as logging them on the system in order for the problem to be addressed straight away.  The Managing Director of Ubico advised that there were a number of different scenarios; it could be that a bin was missed for one or two weeks, then collected as normal for another couple of weeks, before being missed again and this could be attributed to an agency driver who was not familiar with the round and particular properties.  More stringent measures had been put in place with drivers being briefed when they returned from their rounds.  Assisted collections could cause a particular problem as the crews had to go and collect the bins from a particular place and they needed to know where these properties were.  There had been a bigger reduction in the number of missed assisted collections which was positive.  The Member expressed the view that this situation needed to be monitored closely and he did not feel that it would be acceptable to wait until July 2018 for the next report.  This was particularly true in the case of grounds maintenance and he felt that a report was needed when the review had been completed setting out how this frontline service would be monitored.  The Head of Community Services recognised that grounds maintenance was a concern and he provided assurance that it was being addressed.  The Officer responsible for monitoring the contract had been absent due to sickness for some months and was now leaving the authority so grounds maintenance was being managed between a number of Officers across the Community department.  This was a considerable piece of work but he would be happy to bring a report back to the Committee before the growing season in the spring.  Another Member questioned whether it was possible to bring in additional resources to clear the backlog.  The Head of Community Services advised that he had met with the new supervisor that morning to discuss a contract for clearing the backlog and he hoped he would have the timescales for that within the next day or two.  He explained that a key member of staff had recently retired from Ubico and unfortunately had taken with him a lot of knowledge about the grounds maintenance service which had not been recorded; this was a completely unacceptable situation and effectively meant that the service had to be rebuilt which was a fairly significant project and Ubico had brought in additional resources to do that.  The Managing Director of Ubico recognised that this was not an excuse but the most important thing was building resilience going forward and putting mechanisms in place to maintain the service.  He had tasked the Senior Operations Manager with tackling this and Ubico would be engaging with the Council in order to come up with a clear framework for both parties.

31.10         In terms of missed bin collections, a Member expressed the view that some members of the public had not realised the food waste was now being collected separately and therefore they were reporting missed bins when in reality they had not actually been collected yet.  The Environment and Waste Policy Officer explained that the online form project would mean that data could be captured at the point of someone reporting a missed bin so Customer Services would be able to ask more questions to establish whether it was a genuine missed collection before it was reported.  The Managing Director of Ubico went on to indicate that a lot of missed collections were straightforward and to do with placement of bins e.g. a food waste caddy behind another bin or five or six bins being located in a particular area.  Notwithstanding this, one or two missed bins had been reported in areas he had visited with the crews when he knew this was not the case and had taken photographs of the bins that had been presented so he recognised that some of the reports could be down to residents being unfamiliar with the new system.  A Member recognised that these were valid reasons but he pointed out that there was more than one crew member and he questioned why they did not tell the driver when a bin had been missed.  The Managing Director of Ubico accepted this point and confirmed that every effort was made to put agency drivers with experienced loaders.

31.11         A Member questioned whether the improvement in recycling rates was sustainable and was advised that the figures did tend to be higher during spring/summer due to increased garden waste and it was likely that there would be reduction from the 58.44% in Quarter 1 of 2017/18 by the end of the year, although it was hoped that 55% could be achieved.  A Member queried whether certain areas tended to be better at recycling than others and was informed that there could be difficulties in places with bin stores and communal recycling areas, however, there were more likely to be problem people than particular places.  The main way of tackling this was through the provision of consistent information and encouragement.

31.12         A Member went on to draw attention to Page No. 25, Paragraph 3.3.10 of the report, which seemed to suggest that garden crews did not always finish their rounds and he sought an explanation as to why this was the case.  The Contracts Manager explained that there were two garden waste rounds which took place all year, however, a third vehicle had been procured to cope with seasonal demand and potential future growth through new housing developments.  This vehicle had not been used consistently so far but, as part of the improvement plan, Ubico was committed to using the third vehicle throughout the year.  It was noted that drivers were only able to work a set number of hours per day; whilst the rounds were achievable within these hours, there may be occasions where they could not be completed, for example, if there was an agency driver, or if a large number of bins were presented on that particular day.  Furthermore, the tipping facility for garden waste closed at a certain time and drivers were not permitted to tip the following day as garden waste could not be stored on vehicles overnight.

31.13         A Member expressed concern that the reporting system did not currently provide an update on what was being done to address the issue; this was particularly difficult for Members reporting incidents on behalf of local residents.  The Contracts Manager explained that, during Quarter 1 of 2017/18, a paint spillage had been reported 16 times; at the point of reporting, it was unclear whether this was a job for Ubico.  In this instance, the ability to self-serve was not particularly helpful.  As such, it was planned to start from the beginning and reassess the service which would be linked to the online forms project.

31.14         With regard to the improvement plan agreed with Ubico, a Member was of the view that the aim to reduce missed bin collections did not go far enough; the average for 2016/17 was 43 and it was important to improve on that.  In terms of KPIs, the current target for bin collections was 99%; a reduction to below 50 per week would equate to 0.09% missed bins and therefore a more realistic target would be for 99.9% bin collections.  The Head of Community Services agreed that the KPIs needed to be reviewed; however, he felt that improving upon the 2016/17 performance may be unachievable.  He stressed that 65% of the borough had experienced changes to the waste collection service and, therefore, parity with the previous year would make more sense, although he took the point that Members were looking for improvement.  The Managing Director of Ubico provided assurance that he was looking for continuous improvement; however, it was important that the targets in the improvement plan were set at an achievable level and that Ubico did not commit to something it could not deliver.  After the October target to reduce the number of missed bin collections by a further 50% had been achieved, this would need to be maintained and improved further.

31.15         A Member queried what the reason was behind the reduction in fly-tipping and was advised that a lot of enforcement work had been carried out by Tewkesbury Borough Council.  There had generally been an increase in fly-tipping, both on a county and national level, so this was a positive result.  In response to a query, the Contracts Manager explained that large scale, skip-size fly-tips were common which suggested waste operators, who may be acting illegally, and this information was fed back to the Environment Agency.

31.16         The Chief Executive thanked the representatives from Ubico and the Joint Waste Team for attending the meeting and felt that it had been particularly helpful to have a discussion about the issues that had been faced over the past six months.  He stressed that everyone was striving for improvement, and wanted the waste service to be the best it could possibly be, and he hoped that impression had come across to Members.  He reiterated the enormous amount of change that had taken place over the last year in terms of round changes and vehicle procurement as well as changes to several significant Officers within the Council, Ubico and Joint Waste Team.  He thanked Members for their involvement and felt that it would make sense to bring an update report to the March meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, prior to the annual update in July 2018.  It was subsequently

RESOLVED          1.   That the Ubico update report be NOTED.

2.   That an update report in respect of bin collections and grounds maintenance to be brought to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 20 March 2018.