To consider the progress made in the response to the recommendations stated in the 2015/16 annual report concerning the audit of the trade waste collection service.

36.1           The report of the Interim Head of Community Services, circulated at Pages No. 82-89, provided an update in relation to the recommendations arising from the trade waste audit.  Members were asked to consider the progress that had been made.

36.2           The Interim Head of Community Services advised that the findings of the trade waste audit had been presented to the Audit Committee at its meeting in June 2016.  The audit had identified a number of recommendations which were being used to help drive forward service improvements and Officers were working with Ubico and the Joint Waste team to deliver those changes.  Appendix 1 to the report set out the progress that had been made to date.

36.3           In response to a query regarding recommendation 1, ‘Financial: delivery of service is not commercially viable’, the Head of Finance and Asset Management advised that there was currently no assurance that the trade waste service was operating to its commercial optimum and it was necessary to undertake a review to check whether the service was operating effectively and bringing in the income expected.  It was noted that the review would be carried out by a consultant and a report would be presented in April 2017.  A Member asked who would be receiving that report and was informed that it would go to the Head of Community Services.  Clarification was provided that the review had not yet commenced and was currently going through the approval process with the partner authorities listed in the update. The project would be carried out by the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) and would be a continuation of the work which had already been done in respect of commercialisation.  The overall cost of the work would be approximately £10,000 shared between each of the partner organisations, however, there was no budget for the work and that was something which would need to be considered going forward. 

36.4           A Member noted that a request had been made to Ubico for detailed budgets for 2017/18 and he queried whether the Council was moving to a full commercially viable charging system.  The Head of Finance and Asset Management explained that this related to his earlier point about the lack of detail in the financial information provided by Ubico.  It was necessary to fully assess the cost of delivering the trade waste service to get an idea as to what price to set; there was a question mark around the definition of the service i.e. was it a commercial waste service or a wider recycling service.  There were other operators in the market so it needed to be a balanced fee rather than a straight accounting figure.  The Member felt that it would be interesting to see what this would mean financially.

36.5           A Member questioned why Tewkesbury Borough Council, Cheltenham Borough Council and West Oxfordshire District Council were the only three authorities paying for the review.  She also raised concern as to why more money was being put into the vehicle fleet when it may be that it was not commercially viable to offer a trade waste service.  Members were advised that it was in the Ubico business plan to carry out a review for Tewkesbury Borough Council, as per a request made last year, and it was felt that it would be beneficial to review the other two local authorities that had joined Ubico at the same time.  This would make it cheaper but did not mean that those trade waste collections would be consolidated.  The Council was legally required to offer a trade waste collection but part of the review would be to establish whether Ubico could be the sole supplier.  Members were informed that the vehicle being purchased would not be purely for trade waste collection; as well as building resilience into the fleet, there were likely to be other local authorities that would want to hire the vehicle so it would have other uses.

36.6           It was

RESOLVED          That the progress made against the recommendations arising from the trade waste collection service be NOTED.