Council wheeled bin policy criticised by government inspectors

In a best value report, government inspectors said that the council's waste collection and recycling service is fair but has poor prospects for improvement. The council's waste collection service covers the 44,000 households in the borough, the majority of which are in the Burton upon Trent. The inspection team gave the council's services “one star” because they concluded that the “council needs to do more in terms of recycling, waste minimisation, education and enforcement.”

Mary Perry, commissioning inspector, Central Region Audit Commission Inspection Service, said:
“We believe that East Staffordshire’s waste collection and recycling service has poor prospects for improvement because their plans are reliant upon a new contractor delivering improvement in the absence of a clear strategic framework to support it. The council will need to work closely with its citizens to increase public participation in recycling and to reduce the amount of waste produced. These important aspects were excluded from its best value review.”

The inspectors said that the council is not doing enough to “educate, encourage and facilitate their residents to minimise, re-use or recycle rubbish”. The inspectors criticised the council for not having a recycling or waste management strategy and for not having an education and awareness programme for waste minimisation and recycling. “We saw little in the way of information for customers,” they said.

Barrier
The council is currently achieving a recycling rate of 6.2% and has to hit its government target of 10% by 2003/4. But the inspectors said that some of the council's policies could hamper this. For example, the inspectors said that its policy of providing 240 litre wheeled bins and its policy on second bin provision could be a barrier to achieving a reduction in the amount of waste collected and an increase in recycling.

The inspectors also said that the council should stop the provision of second bins on request and modify the ruling on bins for larger families. When the bins were introduced in 1995, the amount of waste collected per household rose significantly and that East Staffordshire’s residents currently produce around 407kg of waste per person per year, above the average 386kg.

And the inspectors found weaknesses in the council's monitoring of its recycling schemes. For example, while three-quarters of the borough have access to a kerbside scheme, the council is not monitoring how popular it is, nor is it taking action to ensure a higher take up. The inspectors noted: “We visited the village of Rolleston on a collection day and estimated that around 50% of households were participating in the scheme. The council did not have any plans in place to increase this take up.” The Audit Commission concluded that a lack of strategy was causing problems and that a clearer focus is needed.

The council also operates a home composting initiative and 4318 garden compost bins have been sold at a discount price to residents. But while the council has attempted to evaluate the success of the campaign by sending questionnaires to people who had bought a subsidised bin, the inspectors said: “We were disappointed that the council has been unable to demonstrate in quantitative terms how effective this scheme has been in reducing the amount of biodegradable material going to landfill from the East Staffordshire area.”