Agenda item

To consider the progress made in respect of the recommendations arising from the Ubico audit.

24.1           The report of the Head of Community Services, circulated at Pages No. 166-186, provided an update on actions that had been taken as a result of an Internal Audit report which sought to improve the client monitoring of the Ubico contract. It also provided an update on the actions that were currently underway and ongoing. Members were asked to consider the progress made in respect of the recommendations which had arisen from the Ubico audit.  

24.2           The Head of Community Services explained that the report before the Committee sought to put into context what had been happening with Ubico in the past six months. Times had been turbulent but improvements had been made which he felt it was important to note. In March 2016, the Council had completed its fleet procurement and the new vehicle fleet was delivered; the procurement of the vehicles had been a major project and was primarily managed by the Joint Waste Team, in close liaison with the Interim Head of Service and Ubico. In addition, significant service changes had been introduced in April 2017 and over 60% of the Borough had a change of day or week to their waste and recycling collection as well as a change to the way that food waste was collected. Any changes to waste collections were expected to cause a degree of disruption to the service but, in this case, the disruption had gone on for a considerable time; an improvement plan was in place and was being monitored carefully. A number of significant personnel changes within the last six months had added to the issues faced and had an impact on the delivery of the actions. The Head of Community Services had been appointed as the lead commissioner of the Ubico contract, the Head of the Joint Waste Team had resigned and a new Managing Director of Ubico had been appointed.

24.3           Attention was drawn to Appendix 2 to the report which set out the Ubico client monitoring audit recommendation and progress report. The Head of Community Services explained that the Joint Waste Team had commenced a review of the street cleansing service to analyse the type of requests that were being received by the Council and to establish if there were better ways of working; there was still concern about the reactive nature of the grounds maintenance and fleet management but there were plans in place to try and address this so the Head of Community Services was in the process of recruiting a dedicated resource to undertake a project which would ensure performance in that regard was better monitored; the garden waste and trade waste schemes were currently being reviewed and it was anticipated that positive information would come forward over the next few months; a whole host of meaningful KPIs were being established and would include things like measuring non-completion of works in relation to cemeteries, management of the vehicle fleet etc. It would then be possible to consistently provide performance information to Members. Performance and budgeting monitoring had improved over the last few months and the finance team was now relatively comfortable with the information being provided so that action was now complete; there was now someone in control of monitoring the compliance of the contract and six weekly meetings took place to discuss overall contract performance, health and safety and current projects and these worked particularly well; grounds maintenance monitoring had been ad-hoc which was of concern, however, the Head of Community Services indicated that there was now a plan in place to address this; the stock levels of waste bins had been a concern but there was now a procedure in place whereby Ubico had an Officer at the depot that checked the stocks of bins and advised the Council when it needed to order more; quarterly invoices were now received unless the Council asked for them at different times; a data sharing agreement had been drafted and was in the process of being agreed by One Legal and Ubico; and the Communications Protocol and its appendices were under review – this was a fairly extensive piece of work but the Head of Community Services was relatively confident the target date of April 2018 would be achieved.

24.4           During the discussion which ensued, a Member thanked the Head of Community Services for the inclusion of target dates on the action plan but he felt it would also help to have smiley/sad faces so the Committee could quickly pick up whether the action was slipping or not. The Head of Corporate Services felt that this would be a good idea as it would make the document easier to read. In addition, the Member questioned whether there were policies in place for Ubico to act quickly on something that the Council had passed on to it. In response, the Head of Community Services explained that there was currently no specific policy in place but it was necessary to build something into the KPIs as the current system was not fit for purpose. Tewkesbury Borough Council was careful about what it ‘flagged up’ as urgent and he hoped other partner authorities took the same approach. Parish Councils had installed bins themselves over many years and the numbers had increased a lot but the staff servicing them had not. The Managing Director of Ubico was keen to ensure resources were maximised and was investigating whether there were opportunities for changing the way the company operated e.g. bins that did not need emptying were not emptied and grass that did not need cutting was not cut i.e. grass should not be longer than a certain length rather than grass being cut a certain number of times a year.  A Member questioned who would monitor KPIs and, in response, she was advised that the Joint Waste Team would monitor those relating to waste, recycling and street cleansing and Tewkesbury Borough Council would monitor grounds maintenance. It was felt that some issues could easily be addressed with the use of specific KPIs and the Chair undertook to send Officers a copy of the Red, Amber and Green (RAG) ratings for the highways KPIs for information. The partnership board at Ubico would ultimately decide what the KPIs would be. In response to a query regarding the operating licensing agreement with Ubico, the Head of Community Services explained that the Council had a contract with Ubico and that had KPIs against it which needed to be tightened up. Obviously the Council could not penalise Ubico financially as it would also be penalising itself.

24.5           Having considered the report before it, the Committee

                  RESOLVED          That the progress made in respect of the recommendations                               which had arisen from the Ubico audit be NOTED.