Labour and Conservative councillors united at last night's extraordinary meeting of the council to out-vote the city council's largest party, the Liberal Democrats and reject the new collection service.
The decision came despite a MORI poll showing that 80% of residents on the scheme were satisfied with the service and 88% found it easy to adapt to the scheme. The poll also found that 73% residents recycled more through the scheme and two thirds said the council should keep the scheme as it is.
Council officers believe the decision to scrap the service will see Southampton failing to reach its 2005/06 statutory performance target for the recycling of household waste.
The service, which used grey-lidded wheeled bins for residual waste and blue-lidded bins for recyclable materials to be collected on alternate weeks, was put on hold in February 2004 after it had been introduced to 26,000 properties.
The council had intended to expand the service city-wide by summer 2005, but a moratorium was called following objections from Labour and Conservative councillors.
Decision
Last night's meeting saw the full council deciding to re-introduce weekly collections of residual waste, but keep recycling collections on a fortnightly basis. The rollout of wheeled bins will continue, and council officers were asked to look at alternative methods of collecting recyclable materials that might be “both environmentally and financially beneficial”.
In a report to the council, officers said the decision to re-introduce weekly collections of residual waste would cost the council 750,000 each year, including the recruitment of 18 additional staff and the procurement of five additional collection vehicles.
And, they said that the extra landfilling that would be required would mean the potential income for the council through next year's Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme would be cut in half, effectively costing the council about 2.8 million.
It is also possible that 335,000 of grant money from Defra's Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund could be lost because it had been awarded for the alternate weekly scheme.
Objection
Prior to last night's meeting, the leader of Southampton city council formally objected to the moves to scrap the fortnightly residual waste collections. Cllr Adrian Vinson said it had conflicted with the “clear majority view of citizens who have had experience of the alternate weekly system, as expressed in the MORI survey”.
Cllr Vinson said: “The decision disregards considered and evidence professional advice, without presenting any evidence other than anecdotal to show that the public will be better served or receive better value for money as a result of weekly collections.”
He said the decision undermined the reputation of the council and would also see Southampton paying more in landfill costs and losing out on a 420,000 Local Public Service Agreement reward grant.
Concern
Back in August, environment minister Elliot Morley wrote to Southampton to express his concern at the council's failure to meet its statutory performance target of recycling 16% of household waste by 2003/04.
Further concern was expressed by the Audit Commission, which inspected the city's waste management services in May 2004 and called the city's prospects for improvement “uncertain”. Commission inspectors said the council's progress in increasing recycling rates was “poor”.
Council officers believe last night's decision will mean that Southampton will only reach a 16% rate in 2004/05 and will fail to reach the 24% target for 2005/06 by three percentage points, not even reaching the statutory target by 2006/07.
Neighbours
Ironically, households in neighbouring Eastleigh achieved the highest recycling rate for dry recyclables in England in 2002/03 using an alternate weekly collection system including fortnightly residual waste collections. The service was introduced by Eastleigh in 1996 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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