The rurally-based, Labour-controlled council, received some praise for its refuse collection in an Audit Commission report released today. However, inspectors had strong words to say over the council's failure to prioritise recycling, and said it was on course to miss statutory targets of 10% recycling by 2003-04 and 18% by 2005-06.
Inspectors said: “The Council has put little effort into recycling. Consequently the recycling rate in North Warwickshire is low and, from the Council’s figures, appears to be falling (4.99 per cent in the first six months of 2002/3 compared with 5.19 per cent in the comparable period in 2001/02).
The council, which serves 61,900 people living in 25,600 households including the towns of Atherstone and Coleshill, was warned: “Delays in introducing a new multi-material recycling collection, originally planned for October 2002 and now planned for the end of January 2003, mean the Council will not meet its target of recycling 7.5 per cent of waste this year (2002-03).”
Collections
The Audit Commission highlighted the council's kerbside paper collections as an area for particular concern, saying they were too infrequent – most are only once every four weeks – and only around 21% of the 17,000 households involved actually put any paper out.
The council's bring banks were found to be in “shoddy” condition, and inspectors were also unhappy that recycling credits were not being passed on to contractors. As well as an overall lack of detail in the council's recycling plan – which failed to receive government approval for its lack of detail – the Audit Commission said that waste minimisation needed to be tackled urgently.
Inspectors wrote: “The Council is not addressing the key issue of minimising the total amount of waste. It has no aims relating to it, and its current target is just based on increasing last year’s target by 3 per cent (about the national figure for growth in waste). We spoke to managers, staff and Councillors who did not recognise waste minimisation as an important issue for the Council.”
Disappointed
Commenting on the Audit Commission's findings, North Warwickshire borough council said that it would be launching a number of schemes to boost its recycling.
Councillor Hayden Phillips, deputy leader of the community and environment board said: “The Best Value report has come as a disappointment to us, as we feel that the Inspectors did not give us enough credit for the new projects we are about to launch to improve our recycling targets.”
The council intends to start a new doorstep collection service on January 27 2003, with publicity going out already in local media. A household collection service for green waste is planned for April 2003 – 14,000 households will be have garden waste and vegetable kitchen waste collected for composting.
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