The London Boroughs of Hounslow and Richmond are considering tendering for a joint waste collection contract after talks over a collaborative deal with two other West London councils collapsed.
The deal was being discussed last year by four local authorities – Barnet, Brent, Hounslow and Richmond – involved in the West London Alliance of Councils. The councils were looking at procuring a joint waste collection and grounds maintenance contract.
The Alliance also comprises Hillingdon, Harrow and Ealing, although these councils were not involved in discussions because they already have waste collection deals in place.
The contract would have replaced existing arrangements for the area with the authorities aiming to save money by procuring services jointly from a single contractor.
However, talks between the participating councils fell through in summer 2012 as a number of the authorities were working to different timetables and the joint deal was found not to be viable.
Speaking to lestrecycle.com last week, Jon Freer, assistant director of environment, London borough of Richmond upon Thames, said that while the talks between the councils in the Alliance had ended, the possibility of a joint arrangement between the neighbouring authorities of Richmond and Hounslow was still alive.
Richmond
He said: The procurement became more complicated as soon as we looked into it in detail, and we decided to withdraw because of the timeframes being discussed, the other councils carried on for another month but it was then ended.
Our current contract [with Veolia Environmental Services] runs out in October 2014 and we are currently doing testing and carrying out discussions with contractors ahead of that, we are also looking at joining with Hounslow as it was the closest aligned to us in terms of their requirements.
The council hopes to have developed proposals for how the service may look by early summer 2013, and Mr Freer said that there is a possibility of the councils signing up to the Improvement and Efficiency Social Enterprise (iESE) waste services procurement framework, which was launched last year.
The framework is intended to save councils time and money when compared to carrying out full procurement processes, by allowing signatories to carry out a mini-procurement exercise from the ten suppliers on the framework, who include AmeyCespa, FCC Environment, SITA UK, and Veolia Environmental Services.
He added: iESE is an option that is on the table and we have not ruled anything out, but at this stage it is too early to say what we will be doing. By the early summer we hope to have some proposals.
Barnet
Meanwhile, Barnet council, which had the shortest timetable of all the councils involved in the discussions, last year decided to bring all its waste and recycling collections in house from November 2013 in a bid to save council taxpayers money.
Barnet currently collects residual waste in-house, but recycling collections are carried out by contractor May Gurney.
Upon announcing the new arrangement in November 2012, councillor Dean Cohen, cabinet member for environment, said that the council felt this was the best option for the borough.
He said: We believe we have an opportunity to both drive down costs and improve efficiency by merging these services. This is the in-house with stretch option.
We did explore in detail working with several neighbouring authorities who already outsource this service, but felt that in this instance the in-house with stretch, working very closely with our new support and customer services provider to improve the services, is the best option.
Brent
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In Brent, the local authority plans to go out to tender for a public realm contract, which will include waste collection, as well as recycling, street cleansing and grounds maintenance, later in the year. It aims to have a new waste collection service in place by April 2014.
Brent plans to lease the contract for an initial term of nine years, and with an option to extend for a further seven. The council, whose waste collections are run by waste contractor Veolia Environmental Services, moved from a weekly to an alternate weekly collection system in 2011.
For a closer look at how local authorities and industry are working together to deliver waste management services, sign up for the London Conference orgnaised by letsrecycle.com on March 14.
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