The council is currently drawing up plans for the future of the service when its existing contract, procured jointly with neighbouring Daventry district council in 2011, and which is currently held by Amey, comes to an end in June 2018.
Councillors approved proposals to initiate a tender process for a new contract – comprising solely Northampton borough council – at a meeting last month (see letsrecycle.com story) – but the proposals were then called in for scrutiny by Labour councillors Danielle Stone and Anamul Haque.
The Labour councillors argued at a scrutiny meeting last week (7 December) that the council had failed to provide ‘sufficient information’ to support its decision to seek an external contractor to operate the contract, and called for more detail of the regarding the cost of moving the service in-house.
However, the council’s cabinet again voted in favour of the proposals to out-source the service which currently encompasses household waste and recycling, street cleaning, parks, cemeteries and grounds maintenance and will shortly consult on the future of the service.
Assessment
The council opted to pursue a contractor to take over the contract following an assessment of the options by consultancy firm Eunomia – which suggested that contracting out the work would lead to a higher cost for the local authority offered the option in terms of quality of service.
Taking the service in-house was deemed to be the more expensive option of the three – Eunomia’s assessment claimed, which also considered using a local authority-owned company to carry out the work.
The borough expects that renegotiation of the contract will likely make it more expensive than its current service, which has been cited amongst the reasons for an increase in council tax in the borough from next year.
Commenting on the move, Councillor Brandon Eldred, cabinet member for finance, said: “Over the last few years we have carried out thorough reviews of the Council’s services and management costs and have budgeted very prudently. That has protected our services from the need to make major savings but we do have to take into account major new areas of expenditure such as the waste contract renegotiation so after careful consideration, we are suggesting an increase in council tax.
“The proposed increase is less than 10p a week for band D households. We are proposing the increase because we need to make sure that we can continue to invest in the town’s infrastructure and core services to ensure that our economy continues to grow at the pace it has been doing in recent years.”
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