Waste and recycling collections from the 52,000 households in the Gloucestershire district will now be switched to Ubico, which is owned by Cheltenham borough and Cotswold district councils but operates at arm’s length.
Cllr Simon Pickering, chairman of Stroud district council’s environment committee, said: “Residents should not see any difference with their collections. Whilst Ubico is a new contractor, the teams making the collections are the same, as the former Veolia employees have transferred to Ubico. It will look after waste and recycling collections, street cleaning, public buildings and public toilet cleaning just like its predecessor.”
Switch
Proposals to switch contractor were considered at a council meeting in November (see letsrecycle.com story).
Stroud district council became a shareholder in the company back in February 2016, when Ubico started collecting garden waste for the authority. All of the council’s domestic waste and recycling has now transferred over to Ubico.
Cllr Pickering added: “One of the advantages of working with Ubico is that we are shareholders in the business, which means there is a greater degree of flexibility.
“If, for instance, we need to make changes in the future to our waste and recycling services, we can react quickly to this and make the necessary changes, rather than having to go through lengthy tendering processes.”
Ubico
Ubico was formed by Cheltenham borough council’s waste team in 2012, in a joint partnership with Cotswold district council, and has since grown to six shareholder owners. As well as collecting waste and recycling from the two councils that formed the company, Ubico also collects for Tewkesbury borough council, which signed up in 2014, and now Stroud.
The environmental services contractor also provides services West Oxfordshire district council and Forest of Dean district council.
Ubico now collects household waste and recycling from over 185,000 households in Gloucestershire. The company also operates a large grounds maintenance and street cleaning operation covering an area of over 1,200 square miles across Gloucestershire and West Oxfordshire.
Stroud’s multi-service contract with Ubico commenced on 2 July 2016. And comes ahead of the introduction of a new waste service from November, which will see weekly food waste collections introduced and wheeled-bins replacing black sacks for residual waste collections. Recycling bin and box and residual waste collections are to remain fortnightly during the service change.
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