The Audit Commission has found that the waste collection and recycling services provided by Chesterfield Borough Council are good and have promising prospects for improvement. They gave the service two stars because it is “reliable and responsive”.
The inspectors looked at the waste collection, street cleaning and building cleaning service which costs 2.1 million for 2001/02. These services are currently provided by the council staff. The cost of the service is 32 per household, which is one of the 25% most expensive services in the country.
The current recycling rate is approximately 8% and inspectors believe that the council will meet its recycling targets of 16% for 2003/04 and 24% for 2005/06.
The inspectors said that the services are delivered to a high standard and praised the council's borough-wide paper collection service and its comprehensive network of recycling banks. Mary Perry, commissioning inspector for the Audit Commission Inspection Service, said: “Chesterfield is delivering some good, reliable and responsive services. It has introduced some suitable and timely pilot schemes to develop recycling.”
Cllr Mick Brady, the borough's lead member for environmental services and
sustainability, said: “We are very pleased to have received such a glowing
report from the independent inspectors. It confirms our belief that we
provide good service for the people of Chesterfield.”
He added: “But we are not complacent. Residents of Chesterfield can confidently look forward to an even better service in the future.”
Sickness
However, the inspectors noted that the cost of refuse collection is high and that collection vehicles are working close to their capacity which is leading to occasional overloading. The level of sickness amongst the council's refuse and street cleaning staff is also high, which increases costs and managers now have firm targets to reduce this.
The inspectors said that they think that the council should consider changing the current policy of unrestricted free collection of garden and bulky household waste and look at other councils' recycling schemes.
The report concluded that the service will improve because the council is extending its kerbside recycling schemes to meet government targets.
The council is piloting a green waste scheme for centralised composting which is collected on alternative weeks to the wheeled bin waste. This scheme originally planned to include kitchen waste, but last summer's ban on expanding composting schemes involving kitchen waste due to Foot and Mouth concern meant that the council changed the scheme to include plastics.
The second scheme is an extension of the blue bag newspaper and magazine
recycling scheme to a blue box scheme collecting glass, cans and textiles in
addition to newspaper and magazines. This pilot scheme has been introduced
using the existing blue sack collection contractor in different trial areas to explore
the different take up rates, giving priority to an area which is not as well served by
recycling banks.
To enable the service to improve further, inspectors recommended that the council develop a waste minimisation strategy. And they said that the council should establish a system to evaluate waste collection tenders to ensure best value is obtained which the council is implementing this later in the year.
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