WRAP rival rocked by Defra cuts

Defra has cut funding for the council efficiency body Improvement and Efficiency Social Enterprise (iESE), putting the future of the organisation’s work in the waste managment industry in doubt.

The organisation has had to face conflicts with WRAP over its role and difficulties in securing support for its waste procurement framework.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which provides the principal funding for the organisations work in the waste sector, has opted not to renew its funding for the coming financial year.

It has been questioned whether the organisation offered councils value for money when compared to services performed by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP). The two organisations were forced in 2010 to draw up a memorandum of understanding to avoid duplication of work between the two bodies which took some 16 months to produce and saw 10 revisions.

Defra confirmed to letsrecycle.com that the government had decided against providing further funding to iESE for its work which includes advising councils over partnership working and efficiency savings.

Social Enterprise

The organisation, which is based within the head office of Tandridge district council in Surrey will continue to operate, has now repositioned itself as a not for profit social enterprise with funding coming from local authorities.

Dr Andrew Larner, managing director of iESE, said: iESE has a great range of support available for councils waste services, making up just part of a full range of services that can support all council activity.

Defra funding plays a part in our comprehensive range of waste services and iESE is currently in discussion with the Department over future funding. However, such funding has been reducing for some time now as iESE establishes itself as a not for profit social enterprise.

Demand for iESE support in many areas including waste services is growing rapidly from councils across the UK and our membership is set to more than double this year.

Framework

The cuts come as iESEs waste management services framework, which has been open for around 15 months, still remains unused by local authorities for the procurement of waste collection services.

The framework, which opened for business in June 2012, was intended to allow local authorities to choose from a list of approved suppliers for services including waste and recycling collections and street cleansing in order to save on procurement costs for local authorities.

Before its launch iESEs director of waste resources David Greenfield said the framework would make the process of procuring waste services much simpler for local authorities.
Since its inception 140 councils have signed up but none have yet to committo using the Framework for the procurement of waste collection services.

Tandridge district council is the only local authority to use the framework so far, through which it secured landscaping and grounds maintenance work, but the iESE says it has had serious interest from other councils in using it.

Originally 24 waste management and street cleansing companies were invited to submit bids by the organisation, with 11 then being accepted onto the final framework.

Critics of the scheme say that it has suffered from a limited choice of contractors on board, a problem that was compounded when one of the contractors Enterprise – was bought by Amey, parent company of AmeyCespa, which was also on the framework.

A recycling officer from a London local authority told letsrecycle.com that his council had looked at the iESE procurement framework when drawing up a tender for a waste collection contract in early 2013, but opted not to use the framework due to what was described as a narrow choice of contractors available.

He said: We looked very carefully at the contract arrangements available through iESE but with changes in the market we ended up with four contractors left in the framework that could tender and we had to question whether that could offer us value for money.

The market is dynamic and some the key players were missing from the framework and we did not want to miss out on those possible savings. There would have been some initial savings through the tendering process but we are not sure that it would have evened out over the life of the contract.