Scottish Parliament member Jim Hume has urged the council to ‘rethink’ its position following the revelations, which were issued in a report presented to the council’s economy, environment and infrastructure committee earlier this month.
The council is rolling out fortnightly kerbside sort collections across the region under a system that includes a blue stickered box for paper and cardboard, a red stickered box for glass, metals and plastic bottles, an overflow lidded box with a blue and red sticker for extra recycling space, a food waste caddy (collected weekly) and a residual black sack.
The system was adopted in Wigtownshire in August 2014, with householders in all other areas continuing to receive a weekly single wheeled bin collection while the changes are phased-in.
However, the report presented this month shows the Wigtownshire scheme alone has already cost £435,000 more than expected in 2014/15 – with a further £300,000 overspend forecast for 2015/16.
Factors
Factors contributing to the overspend include additional vehicles to serve the ‘slower than modelled’ routes, an additional 26 collection staff needed to operate the vehicles in rural and high density areas, and new dedicated vehicles for commercial waste.
The costs have been partly offset by additional income from recyclables and £349,000 in grant funding from Zero Waste Scotland.
In total, the council has been awarded £3.4 million in funding from the government organisation across the whole area, with an additional revenue grant expected for Wigtownshire in 2015/16.
The council has so far committed its full Corporate Budget Pressures funding to the Wigtownshire overspend, with the remainder met through the Waste PFI Sinking Fund.
And, while the projected 2015/16 costs will also be met this way, the council report concedes that “the funding approach would not be sustainable if the current arrangements in Wigtown were extended to the rest of the region and an affordable approach requires to be established”.
It adds “there is no doubt that this whole exercise has been a significant learning curve for the service” and concludes that a review of routes and workforce efficiency should now be considered.
Warning
But, calling for a suspension of the roll out, Mr Hume said: “When the council first talked about the scheme, there were early warning signs that it could cause additional strains on workforce and resourcing at a time when council budgets are already very tight.
“The report published this week underlines those fears were not unfounded because so far the scheme already in place for Wigtownshire has cost an extra £435,000. This could have massive implications for communities and the other services provided by the council if the roll out goes ahead to the rest of the region.”
The report states that separate collections have contributed to a 2% rise in the council’s overall recycling rate in 2014/15 and has been advised by Zero Waste Scotland that reverting to a commingled system would be a “backward step” in terms of treatment and disposal costs.
MRF
The council is also developing a materials recycling facility (MRF) to recover recyclables from the 15,000 tonnes of rejects each year from its current Ecodeco mechanical biological treatment (MBT) process. The proposed plant will recover metals, hard plastics, wood and inert materials from waste to landfill.
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