Manchester city council looks set to re-tender its waste and recycling collection service, after abandoning plans to extend its current contract with services provider Enterprise from March 2015.
In a report delivered to the city council executive on Tuesday (April 8), deputy chief executive for Growth and Neighbourhoods Sara Todd recommended that delivery of collection and street cleansing should be provided through a contract at a significantly lower cost than the current deal.
Councillors voted in favour of the proposal to re-tender the contract at the meeting on Tuesday after it had initially favoured renewing the Enterprise contract in October (see letsrecycle.com story).
The EnterpriseManchester joint venture, which began in February 2008, is an agreement between Manchester city council and waste contractor Enterprise, which holds an 80% stake in the partnership.
While the report noted that EnterpriseManchester had been successful in boosting the citys recycling rate from 19% to 36% over the course of three years, it argues the cost for residual waste disposal will increase by 23% to 259 per tonne in 2014 meaning residents will need to take on more responsibility for the amount of waste they recycle.
Challenges
The report adds that under the current seven-year collection agreement, which is due to expire in February 2015, any service offer for the future must demonstrate how these challenges can be managed more effectively to reduce costs and contribute to neighbourhood management.
The report stated: The separation of services in that bins are collected by a different organisation to the one that cleans the streets with neither party having full responsibility for the area which leads to a disconnect at a very local level and high levels of customer dissatisfaction.
In addition there are issues particularly in some areas of the city in terms of how residents interact with the service and understand their responsibilities which means waste is not separated and often not placed in the correct bin.
It goes on to criticise EnterpriseManchester for the inconsistent application of agreed policies and a failure to apply a common sense approach to interpretation of policies, which leads to friction at neighbourhood level.
Catchment
At present, an estimated 152,000 tonnes of waste are produced from households within the councils catchment area per year, with Enterprise operating fortnightly collections of residual waste and alternate weekly collections of separate recyclables.
The report recommends that the council undertake a competitive procurement process later this year with the intention of rolling out new services from March 2015. It states that the new contract should be designed to take advantage of future opportunities for collaboration with other strategic partners.
The council had been in discussions with Trafford council over potentially jointly procuring a new waste collection contractor as current contracts for both authorities end at a similar time in 2015. However, the report clarifies that there are no immediate opportunities for collaboration with geographic neighbours.
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