Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies were received by Councillor Alan James.

No declarations were raised.

The chair allowed Councillor Brian Jones to query the Rhyl Regeneration Programme and Governance, which had been delayed until March 2025. He raised concern that the projects funded by the levelling-up fund would need to be completed by March 2026. He believed that a year wouldn’t be enough time to complete the projects.

Responding Corporate Director: Economy and Environment informed Councillor Jones that the Rhyl Regeneration Programme and Governance item on the forward work programme would discuss the broader programme and not just the funded projects and was running to schedule.

To receive the minutes of the Communities Scrutiny Committee held on 5 September 2024 (copy enclosed).

The minutes of the Communities Scrutiny meeting held on Thursday 5 September 2024 were submitted. There were no matters arising.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the Communities Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 5 September 2024 be approved as a true and correct record of the proceedings.

To consider a joint report by the Corporate Director: Environment and Economy & Head of Highways & Environmental Services (copy enclosed) to enable the Committee to scrutinise the proposal that was presented to Cabinet on 1st October 2024.

The Lead Member for Environment and Transport, alongside the Corporate Director of Economy and Environment and the Head of Highways and Environmental Services, presented the report (previously circulated). The report detailed the implementation of the new weekly trollibocs recycling service and associated waste collection functions and the adjustments required to ensure sufficient resources were allocated to ensure the new system could operate on a sustainable footing going forward and enable the Committee to scrutinise the proposal (appended to this report) that was presented to Cabinet on 1 October 2024.

Opening the discussion the Chair questioned whether there had been any additional information since the Cabinet meeting on October 1, in order to prevent repetition of the previous debate.

The Lead Member and officers clarified that further to Cabinet meeting in October the extra funding approved allowed the matter of missed collections to be addressed.

The Corporate Director reminded the Committee that upon introduction of the new service many rounds were failing to be completed and temporary additional resources were needed in terms of overtime, additional agency staff and vehicles.

The majority of residents were now getting the weekly recycling collection service although it was acknowledged that there were still issues with some specific properties not getting a consistent collection service.

The crux of the matter was that there was not enough rounds designed into the service to collect from 46000 properties across the county every week. The under resource of the service at the outset led to the service failure. Moving forward plans had been made to deliver a more sustainable service for the long term with the provision of additional vehicles and drivers.

Since the Cabinet decision Welsh Government had been approached to request additional support towards the capital spend. Welsh Government had indicated that they were willing to provide additional support – although the exact figure was as yet unknown. As a result the cost of purchasing the additional vehicles should be less than previously anticipated and two of those vehicles would be electric rather than diesel.

The service had started to implement the decision made by Cabinet with the procurement of vehicles – six of the eight vehicles had been ordered with anticipation of ordering the electric vehicles imminently. Recruitment for the staff was also underway. The new reorganised recycling rounds would commence on Monday 4^th November 2024

Members had been invited to visit the Waste Station earlier in the week to review the revised recycling rounds and check that areas that had previously had problems were included. They were confident that normal service would be resumed.

Whilst the Committee welcomed the update regarding the sourcing of additional vehicles and staff they felt that it would be beneficial to bring  a report back in spring 2025 to review how the revised rounds had influenced the service.

Responding to members questions the officers advised:

·       Delivery of the diesel vehicles was anticipated in December but the ULEV vehicles were due in the new year, temporary arrangements were being implemented to cover that time frame.

·       Recruitment of additional staff was due to begin the following week. There had been a high level of interest from the agency staff who had been covering the rounds so far.

·       Any future missed collections should be logged through the C360 system.

·       Collection round numbers varies day to day, the maximum number of rounds on any given day would be 28.

·       The number of hire vehicles had been reduced once the back log of collections had been addressed, but a few were still being used until the new vehicles arrived.

·       The rounds were being  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Scrutiny Co-ordinator (SC) guided members through the Communities Scrutiny Committee Forward Work Programme.

The SC advised that there had been significant amendments to the forward work programme over the previous few weeks. An email had been sent to Committee members on 1^st October to explain which items had been rescheduled and the reasons for it.

There had been an agreement at the Scrutiny Chairs and Vice-chairs Group that priority would be given to projects associated with the Transformation Programme – such as the Waste Service and Public Conveniences Proposal. However all items previously on the forward work programme were still included – albeit at a later date.

The Scrutiny Co-ordinator sought approval from the Committee for those changes to the Communities Scrutiny Committee forward work programme along with the inclusion of the Waste report proposed earlier in the meeting.

RESOLVED that subject to the above the Communities Scrutiny Committee forward work programme be agreed.

Members had no feedback to relay to the committee.

Meeting concluded at 11:25am