Agenda, decisions and draft minutes

The Leader welcomed and congratulated Councillor Will Price, newly elected county councillor, who was attending his first Cabinet meeting.

Councillor Gwyneth Ellis, Lead Member for Finance, Performance & Strategic Assets

Councillor Gwyneth Ellis, Lead Member for Finance, Performance & Strategic Assets

No declarations of interest had been made.

No declarations of interest had been made.

To consider a report by Councillor Barry Mellor, Lead Member for Environment and Transport (copy enclosed) seeking approval of additional resources to ensure the new weekly trollibocs recycling service and associated waste collection functions can operate as envisaged.

RESOLVED that Cabinet –

(a)      approve an additional £1.299m in capital expenditure for the purpose of procuring additional recycling vehicles funded by prudential borrowing;

(b)      approves an additional £1.067m of revenue costs in order to ensure the service change can deliver as planned on a sustainable footing.  This includes the revenue costs for the prudential borrowing for the vehicles referred to in paragraph 3.1 of the report;

(c)      agrees that the decision be implemented immediately without call-in, in accordance with section 7.25 of the Council’s Constitution, and

(d)      confirms that it has read, understood and taken account of the Wellbeing Impact Assessment (Appendix A to the report) as part of its consideration.

Councillor Barry Mellor presented the report seeking Cabinet approval of additional resources to ensure the new weekly trollibocs recycling service and associated waste collection functions could operate as envisaged.

Councillor Mellor referred to the implementation of the new waste/recycling service on 3 June 2024 which had not worked as expected and both he and the Leader had publicly apologised to residents and committed to addressing the issues to ensure the new system operated effectively.  A member led scrutiny review would be undertaken into the roll out of the new system to understand what had gone wrong and to learn lessons for the future.  However, today’s report was specifically about addressing the issues which had emerged and to ensure the new system worked.

Since the roll out of the new service many of the new recycling rounds had failed to complete their daily collections which resulted in unacceptable numbers of missed collections/uncollected waste and additional temporary resources had been quickly allocated to address the problem.  The temporary additional resources came at a cost but the total additional cost for 2024/25 would be offset by a one-off receipt from the refinancing of the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Partnership meaning there was no budget pressure in the current financial year for the service.  However, a permanent solution was needed to enable the service to be successful and sustainable in the long term which had been set out in the report.  In brief, there were not enough recycling rounds planned into the design of the service and additional resources were required to provide a permanent solution and sustainable service.

Councillor Mellor recommended the proposal as set out in the report to allocate additional resources to enable the service to operate as envisaged.  Failure to do so would result in either continuing to allocate temporary additional resources which was inefficient and more expensive than the proposed permanent solution, or removal of the temporary additional resources which would again result in large numbers of missed collections – neither option could be supported.

The Corporate Director: Environment and Economy provided some further detail to the report.  The model for the new recycling service had been based on a number of assumptions which had proved incorrect, the main issue being some of the daily recycling rounds had been designed with too many properties and were not being completed.  Additional recycling rounds would be required to deliver the new service successfully and sustainably.  The original model had been based on 20 recycling rounds per day and the number of additional rounds required ranged from 6 to 8 rounds depending on the day of the week.  This required the purchase of an additional 8 vehicles at a capital cost of circa £1.3m (funded via prudential borrowing) and additional drivers and loaders to operate the vehicles.  Revenue costs associated with the additional rounds amounted to £1.067m which included the revenue costs for prudential borrowing of the additional vehicles.  A formal request would be made to the Welsh Government for additional capital funding to assist with the cost of purchasing the vehicles.  The additional budget required (£1.067) from April 2025 would need to form part of the budget setting process for 2024/25. 

Finally, Cabinet was advised that if they approved the proposal work could start on planning to implement the revised recycling rounds and it was hoped they would be in place within weeks.  The Corporate Director was confident that the new rounds would provide a permanent solution and enable the service to become sustainable.

The Leader thanked the Lead Member and Corporate Director for clearly setting out the position.  Cabinet  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.