Selby awards 24m contract to Enterprise

From October 1, the Lancashire-based services company will take over collection operations from current contractor and waste management company Veolia Environmental Services. It will also handle other services such as street cleaning, litter picking and graffiti removal.

The seven-and-a-half year deal, finalised this month, is worth £3,552,000 in the first year, reducing to an average annual cost of £3,196,000 for the remaining years. The extra money in the first year will help cover the costs of additional recycling containers for plastic and a new collection fleet

Importantly, mixed plastics including bottles will be collected at the kerbside for the first time in addition to paper and card (green box) and glass, cans, foil (blue box) and garden waste.

Mixed plastics are not commonly collected by local authorities due to the difficulty sorting the different polymers and a lack of financially viable markets. However, a spokesman for the council told letsrecycle.com that while no final decision had been made on where the material would be sent for reprocessing, its intention was to use a UK facility.

The contract will also see Selby council move to alternate-weekly collections of recycling and non-recyclable waste in a bid to divert waste from landfill, with waste collected on the same day of the week.

The council made a commitment in 2007 to move to an alternate-weekly system after its growth in recycling rates “levelled off” (see letsrecycle.com story). Residents in Selby achieved a 32% recycling rate in 2007/08.

The vice chair of Selby district council's environment board, councillor Mike Jordan, said: “We have a duty to use taxpayers' money as effectively as possible and the new service means we can broaden our recycling facilities, improve the way we clean the streets and react more quickly to the individual needs of our residents.

“This new contract will include the collection of many different types of plastic which will lead to a large reduction in the amount of waste people will be putting in their main bin and further reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill sites. So a new system in which recycling is collected one week and other refuse collected the next is more appropriate and will mean less waste is dumped in the ground,” he added.

The new agreement with Enterprise is the largest contract Selby council has on its books and also includes a new monitoring system to make sure that residents concerns can be responded to as quickly as possible, new flexible ways of working for staff and additional measures to investigate instances of illegal fly-tipping.

Details of collection times for each household will be distributed nearer the time when the contract commences in the autumn.

Bob McBride, public sector operations director from Enterprise Managed Services Ltd, said: “We've got a lot of experience running street scene services for local councils in other parts of the country, such as Liverpool and Wolverhampton. We can bring this expertise to our work in Selby to make sure that we deliver the highest standards.”