Meeting documents

Paragraph 3 - Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information)

The Chairman welcomed Tim Guile and Mark Sturgeon, representatives from Serco, to the meeting.  The Committee expressed concern regarding the high level of complaints received from residents and the negative publicity in the local newspapers.  Photographs had been supplied by residents of discarded bins.  The main concerns were:

-   Missed waste collections (repeatedly)

-   Collect and return service (for disabled and elderly)

-   Poor behaviour from collection crews

-   Containers not being put back correctly and lids left open

There was concern that complaints would be taken forward to the Ombudsman if they were not being addressed.

With regard to the problem areas in the Hughenden Valley, Tim Guile advised the Committee that 2 additional supervisors had been engaged to work with these areas and the Regional Support Manager from Milton Keynes.  Unfortunately the additional manpower did not have local knowledge of the area.  It was confirmed that Mark Sturgeon would be working in the district most of the time, and would be on call full time, as they had not been able to recruit a contract manager.  In addition, David Pennycard, Regional Support Manager would be based in the region 3 days per week and would concentrate on the collect and return service in 2014.  The Serco contract in Milton Keynes had been running for over 4 years and he would be able to bring expertise gained to this area.  In addition, Serco were beginning a recruitment programme to fill posts currently undertaken by agency staff.  For the Christmas period, 4 additional trucks had been hired in addition to the 3 extra for the new roll out at a cost of £7k per week.

The committee asked for more information on monitoring so that they could track progress.  It would be useful to warn Councillors in advance if there was a problem in a specific area.  Regarding the Hughenden Valley area, it was enquired whether the rounds were too large for the area.  It was advised that Hughenden was an unusual area but it wasn’t considered to be too much work for the crews.

It was asked when it was expected that a steady state would be achieved for the Wycombe area.  It was advised that 3 months (except for Christmas) would be the end of February and 6 months for the full service to be normalised.  A request was made for an agreed date for performance expectations and it was advised that they would be writing to CDC’s Chief Executive shortly to reply to his letter, including a timetable of dates for when performance issues would be resolved.

Serco were invited to give presentations to Members of both Council’s to inform them of the progress made so far and this was agreed.

Councillors thanked the Serco representatives for the progress that had been made so far.