Meeting documents

To agree the Minutes of the meeting held on 07 April 2016.

The minutes of the last meeting were agreed as a correct.

Members considered a report providing an update on the joint waste collection programme and during which the following key points were made.

 - Phase 3 was mostly complete; the waste team were planning to allow a bedding in period to monitor the situation before beginning Phase 4 - the recycling site reviews.

- The property data required for the integration of Contender with Street Smart was being updated, some of the work for this had been taken on by the Council and the planned date for completion was the end of June.

- The proposals for the Waste Service Review had now been approved by both Cabinets. A report would be brought to the JWCC on how the constitution and existing partnership arrangements would be developed, including options for the inclusion of South Bucks in the future.

- Expenditure on bills and staffing had been lower than estimated in the budget, regarding staffing this was due to some posts not having been filled. It was noted that monthly meetings with WDC’s finance team would be held to review the budgetary position.

- A dip in the recycling rate had been observed, although there had also been a similar fall nationally. There were a number of potential reasons but notably there had been an increase in the rejection rate of recycling due to a greater attention to the quality of recycling.

- There was some discussion regarding residents leaving inappropriate items for recycling. This was a longstanding problem and communications work to improve residents’ recycling practices had been undertaken, members would be consulted on any changes to policy in the future. In particular in the Wycombe area it was asked if an article could be placed in local papers warning residents that it could constitute an offence and of the potential for penalties. It was also advised that part of the DCLG budget could be allocated to communications work to improve residents’ recycling.

- Regarding the Joint Waste Committee for Bucks it was noted that reports were being taken to the relevant Cabinets following its decisions to dissolve itself, to be replaced by the Joint Waste Partnership. The Joint Waste Strategy and Action Plan were unaffected by this. It was asked that confirmation of whether the EfW site tour was going ahead and whether an informal meeting would be held following it could be circulated following the meeting. Clarification regarding the arrangements for the Joint Waste Partnership was also asked for on how its work would be reported to members.

It had been raised previously that a review of the Collection Calendar Options would be undertaken. The review had taken account of feedback from the public which indicated that the hard copy of the collection calendar was consulted most regularly by the service’s users, whereas as the recycling guide was very rarely used. In the light of this the report recommended Option 4, which would provide residents with all the calendar and bank holiday dates on a single folded A4 sheet, with key quality images on the reverse. This option would remove the guide (an 8 page booklet), which absorbed a key part of the communications budget for waste and according to the users’ feedback was rarely consulted, while continuing to provide the key information residents needed in hard copy and in the format most regularly used. It was noted that in the future the possibility of a waste collection app was being considered to complement this, the advantages being that it would be a more direct and quicker way of residents finding the relevant information than the website.

10 August 2016 (TBC)

The date of the next meeting was agreed for Thursday, 29 September at 10.30am.