Agenda and minutes

In accordance with the Inter Authority Agreement, it was noted that the term of office for the Chairman and Vice Chairman would be three years.  Therefore it was recorded that Councillor Beryl Hunwicks and Councillor Vivienne Chapman would be the Chairman and Vice Chairman respectively, of the Joint Waste Contract Services Committee until 8 December 2019.

The minutes of the meeting held on 17 March 2017 were confirmed and signed by the Chairman.

It was noted that the contract had been signed by all partners on 25 May 2017. This had been a little later than planned due to the review of the rural collections process. Elmbridge Borough Council had mobilised on 3 June 2017.

It was noted that there had been significant progress with ICT and the customer contact web forms. There had been a useful demonstration of the ICT on 11 May 2017 in Liverpool, where the Amey contact centre was located. The finalisation of the web forms was a priority, working closely with Amey and staying customer focussed. The target was to have the new system in place by September 2017. The Committee was advised that existing CRM systems were being used at Elmbridge for the time being.

The Committee was advised that there had been a few teething during the early stages of the mobilisation and officers were working with Amey to improve this. Additional collection crews have been brought in by Amey and staff on the ground were working very hard to adapt to the new rounds and ways of working.

Food waste is now collected in a separate vehicle, which creates more flexibility in the service, but is taking longer than anticipated to bed in. An additional catch up crew is dedicated to food waste collection and the service is improving every day.

There would be a meeting later this month to look at lessons learnt which will be used as guidance for the future mobilisations.  Woking Borough Council’s new service will go live in in September 2017.

The Director of Joint Waste Solutions advised the Committee that the focus was on enabling staff to get used to the new ways of working whilst providing catch up resource in the short term. He further advised that Amey’s Partnership Director was very experienced in managing waste and street cleansing services and was fully committed to delivering an excellent service.

Clarification was sought regarding why the food caddy vehicle could not follow the recycling vehicle on the rounds but it was confirmed that the vehicles travelled at different speeds.

It was noted that residents would receive information regarding the Woking Borough Council Mobilisation in early September 2017 and it was agreed that it would be important to show the changes to the existing service in bold and also language needed to be considered, particularly for the Urdu community.

The Chairman thanked the Director, the Contract Implementation Manager and officers for all of their work.

Resolved that the report be noted.

It was noted that Emma Day had carried out a lot of work in an excellent and professional manner. It had been a huge milestone to be able to sign the contract recently after almost three years working on it. It was also confirmed that the signing of the IAA by 5 Local Authorities was also a huge milestone.

It was confirmed that Amey would be an excellent contractor, mobilising 55,000 households with a 95% success rate.

The Lead Officer advised the committee that the IAA allowed, if required, Joint Waste Solutions (JWS) to form a company; this would be mainly to protect the identity and logo of JWS. Investigations into this would be carried out and a detailed report would be brought to this Committee for consideration followed by a Tier One decision at each authority. An option would be to register JWS as a dormant company which would not carry a high cost.

The Chairman commended all the hard work carried out by Emma Day.

Resolved that the verbal update be noted.

The Committee discussed the organisational development for JWS and the service improvement.

The Committee was updated regarding the transition period from Local Authority to JWS, including the web presence by September and imminent email addresses for staff. The Lead Officer and the JWS Director had met with staff individually and collectively to ensure that staff understood the direction of travel and that any issues were resolved.  The staff were very dedicated and the overall impression was that progress was already being made towards JWS officers feeling like one team.  Appraisals would be carried out and this would provide an opportunity for staff to comment on areas they feel could be improved, ultimately forming the basis of an improvement programme.

The structure attached to the report would be resent to Members to show the names of officers filling each post. There were a few gaps in the structure and interviews would be carried out soon. The contracts would be fixed term.

All key corporate advisors were still in place.

It was agreed that communications was a key area for JWS.

As each Authority had different ways of working with varying demographics, it was considered that an SLA should be developed between JWS and each authority. What JWS could do for the authorities and what authorities could do for JWS would be looked into in detail. The following three steps were discussed:

·        Identity baseline – compare each authority, how they carry out tasks and look at 16/17 budgets;

·        Agree mandate – consolidate position;

·        Develop strategy – vision and priorities, develop a shared action plan.

Members were advised that a detailed programme of activity was being created setting out timelines. Costs such as corporate overheads needed to be looked at and areas in which other costs fell, for example training. Some authorities held this budget in waste, others in corporate budgets. Projected budget figures would be brought to the next meeting.

The Chairman thanked the JWS Director for his report.

Resolved that:

·        the report be noted;

·        the JWS structure including names of officers be emailed to Members; and

·        budget figures be brought to the next committee meeting.