Progress made in collecting East Hampshire bins

The service is being introduced under a 32 million contract (see letsrecycle.com story) between the councils and Biffa which began at the start of October. On October 17 Biffa started rolling out the integrated cross-border waste and recycling collection service.

However on November 7 an emergency waste collection plan had to be implemented (see letsrecycle.com story) as the councils had received a substantial number of complaints from residents who had not had their waste and recycling collected.

The number of missed bins, as reported by the council as of November 7, was approximately 4,000 however this number has now dropped to 1,500.

Commenting on the collections Brian Turner, joint client team manager for the councils, said: The number of outstanding bin collections has dropped to 1500 across both the Winchester district and East Hampshire combined so there is gradual progress. Some of the original collections have been made and cases closed but new ones have come to light.

Priority is being given to refuse collections followed by garden waste and then recycling, he added.

A high-level meeting is taking place today (November 24) between Biffa and the councils to discuss how to resolve the issue of the outstanding missed collections and review the progress so far.

Biffa stated that it is continuing to focus on delivering scheduled services as well as remedying the missed collections.

Dream contract

The contract had previously been hailed, by East Hampshire leader councilor Patrick Burridge, as the stuff that dreams are made of.

The initial problems with the roll-out of waste and recycling collections was attributed to a reorganization of collection routes as well as the crews lack of local knowledge meaning some houses were missed.

Vehicle fleet

Biffa have recently entered into a five year contract hire agreement with Specialist Fleet Vehicles (SFS) to provide a new fleet of vehicles to support the Winchester and East Hampshire contract.

Commenting on the new vehicle contract Jodie Scott, group procurement strategy manager at Biffa, said: SFS have shown a thorough understanding of our business requirements and have proven to be flexible, with the capacity to deal with the unexpected very well. Their support in a continuous changing and demanding market has provided the platform to work strategically with Biffa.