“Investment in waste and environment services to include additional staffing on waste rounds, improved city centre cleaning and effective weed control”. That’s what the York Council is promising in their newly published budget for next year.
In total – over two years – an additional £1 million will be found for a new system of “neighbourhood working”.
This, says the Council, will “improve the waste collection service to residents by increasing the number of green waste collections, adding two extra green waste collections each March from 2021 onwards.
The pilot of 3 free replacement boxes per property will continue and be made permanent.
The Council will develop neighbourhood working models across public realm and waste to better respond to the communities needs building on the success of local management, ownership and responsibility elsewhere in the council.
The Council will work with York Business Improvement District to review how city centre cleansing can be improved. The resilience of the services will be improved by removing the reliance on fixed term staff.
In addition they will invest in the weed control service to increase the areas treated and, in response to the world wide ongoing challenge about the use of glyphosate, will trial alternative methods for dealing with weeds such as foams etc”.
The proposal is short on detail but improvements in cleaning services can’t come soon enough for some sub-urban areas.
Several amenity areas are now overwhelmed by fly tipping and litter.
The Westfield/Grange Lane park and adjacent nature area is a case in point and is particularly bad at present.
Westfield Park which is located between Grange Lane and Westfield Place
Some of the affairs of York’s taxpayer funded but independently managed organisation are to be subject to public review next week. The Councils first comprehensive “Shareholder” committee meeting is to look at the results being obtained by several organisations.
These include
Make it York (The tourism and marketing body)
Veritau Ltd – An audit body
City of York Trading – A recruitment and temporary staff agency
Yorwaste/SJB Recycling (Process local waste and refuse)
In the past these bodies have been subject to intermittent “light” scrutiny with many background details contained in “confidential” annexes. Several private annexes are still being reported to next Tuesday’s meeting but fewer than in the past
The meeting is being chaired by Cllr Nigel Ayre who was also responsible for bringing into the public domain reports on the Councils major contracts letting processes.
Make it York (MIY) plans to appoint a new post of “Head of Commercial and Revenue Generation” at a basic salary of £60,000 a year. Performance bonuses could bring the remuneration up to £80.000 pa. MIY failed to recruit to the post at a lower salary earlier in the year. The post has the objective of increasing MIY’s revenues over time such that the company can, in the first instance, become self-funding (relieving the council of its ongoing financial contribution to the business) and, beyond that, increasing the sums available to reinvest in the city.
It is unclear how potential conflicts between commercial targets and York’s traditional values will be reconciled. There have been too many disputes between local traders, visitors and residents in the past few years.
Separately MIY reportsan expected £248,063 loss in the year. This is 6304 above budget expectations. Increased overheads are blamed together with poor merchandise sales in the tourist centre. The organisations new Chair Greg Dyke is due to take over the role in January.
The report touches on the Christmas Market and ongoing difficulties with access for traders (see below).
Veritau Ltd, a company jointly owned by North Yorkshire County Council and the City of York Council, wants to expand. It hopes in future to provide audit services for several additional Council and other public bodies.
City of York Trading Ltd (trading principally as WorkwithYork and WorkwithSchools) was formed in 2011 with the intention of supplying temporary staff to CYC, to schools (in and around the York area) and to other outside organisations. Through City of York Trading Ltd, the reductions in cost to CYC and the return of the profit achieved are designed to assist CYC’s financial position. If CYC had to source staff in the open market, the cost would be substantially higher than current rates paid to the Company.
Unfortunately the reports from this organisation continue to be largely opaque. The shareholder committee is being asked to approve a business plan which is enclosed in a confidential annex. Similarly, the committee is being asked to endorse the appointment of a n additional company director but without the name of the candidate being revealed.
The net cost/return to the Council of this body is not revealed.
Yorwaste/SJB Recycling. The York Council owns 23% of this company. Yorwaste operates Waste Transfer Stations (WTS), Materials Recycling Facilities (MRF), Green Waste Composting, and HWRCs for both NYCC and CYC. It also manages the closed landfill aftercare obligations at several sites including Harewood Landfill (which closed to general waste in March of this year). SJB currently operates three sites (based at Yorkshire Water waste plants) providing green waste composting services to local authorities.
The company is forecasting a loss of over £300,000 on the year. The company blames the impact of a facility closure (Seamer); external commodity prices; and two waste fires for the downturn in its fortunes.
SJB is forecasting a reduced level of profit (£159,000). With 2 of its three operational sites closing it is heavily dependent on achieving a new contract before the end of the year.
The York Council exported 224 tonnes of plastic waste last years.
All went to accredited licensed facilities through the DTS Trading copnay
In 2019 mixed plastic bottles were sent to UK and Spain accredited polymer washing and sorting plants. The EU have the same environmental regulations as the UK
A York woman has been ordered to pay £630 for repeatedly fly-tipping, despite receiving waste disposal advice from City of York Council.
York Magistrates heard on Tuesday (3 December 2019) that Sharn Ogden (aged 27 of Martins Court, York) was seen disposing of a table and chairs in the car park of Martins Court on 29 July 2019.
City of York Council enforcement officers made multiple attempts to contact Ms Ogden, which she failed to respond to. On 13 August 2019, Ms Ogden admitted to leaving the waste and said she would take the items to the Household Waste and Recycling Centre. However when officers returned to Martins Court on 13 October 2019, the items had not been removed.
Since 2016, Ms Ogden has received several home visits from enforcement officers regarding waste issues in the area, six letters advising her how to present her waste correctly and two fly-tipping warnings.
Ms Ogden continued to present her waste unlawfully, has been charged for the removal of items and had now been prosecuted.
She attended court and pleaded guilty to one offence of fly-tipping. She was fined £312 by York Magistrates (3 December 2019) and ordered to pay costs of £286 and a surcharge of £32.
Tom Brittain Assistant Director for Housing and Community Safety at City of York Council, said: “We offer plentiful advice to residents on how to dispose of waste lawfully and safely and, as this and other cases show, we will take action when people fly-tip.
“It is important that rubbish is put out for collection as directed by the council. If you are unsure of your collection days, you can check at www.york.gov.uk/RefuseLookupor by calling us on 01904 551550.
The Council said yesterday (Tuesday) that it had failed to collect recycling from Tedder Road and Slessor Road. They blamed a vehicle breakdown.
Notice on Council web site Tuesday 29th October 2019
The Council says that they will call back to collect the recycling on SATURDAY.
We suspect that message may have not got back to residents. Most have left their recycling on the street. Normally this might not matter – if it was secured from wind and animal attacks – but with the arrival of “Mischief Night” we think residents would be wise to put the recycling in a secure place.
Recycling awaiting collection
Often the Council says that it will catch up with collections on the next working day; but not in this case. This is confusing for residents.
It does raise several questions about how effective the Councils communications channels are. Failings in the waste collection service this summer have been so frequent it almost requires a daily update from them using all social media channels.
The Council might also issue regular updates indicating when more reliable vehicles, with adequate capacity, will be delivered.
Missed bin updates are posted on this link (click) at around 5:00pm each day
We’ve reported the overgrowing thorn bush which is obstructing the entrance to the Chesney Field cycle track
The York Council has agreed to spend over £1/3 million on an
“integrated Waste Management System & In-Cab
Solution” computer system for its waste collection operation.
There has been no report or
business case presented to an executive decision session to indicate the
expected benefits of the new computer system.
The waste collection service has
been subject to considerable criticism recently with bins not being emptied on virtually
every day of the week.
The main cause of the fall in
service standards have been an aging and unreliable fleet. On some occasions
the amount of recycling put out has exceeded the capacity of the existing vehicles.
The Council has remained
tight lipped about when (or even if) new refuse lorries will arrive in the
City.
Against the background of chronic unreliability on refuse collections in the City, it was hoped that a long outstanding review would offer some hope of improvement.
The report starts by saying “Decisions about waste
collection methodology impact upon the specification of replacement waste
vehicles, the replacement of which is imperative to the sustainability of the
service”
In truth, new vehicles should have been purchased months ago.
They weren’t and as a result breakdown are a major cause of the decline in reliability
standards. The report offers little hope of early, decisive action.
The report concludes that separate food waste collection is
not necessary. This is because food waste forms part of the anaerobic digestion
process at the Allerton processing site. It is part of a process which results
in power being generated from waste.
Similar arguments are advanced against the mixed collection
of recyclables.
The report talks about a further review of recycling bring
banks “to stop collecting the same materials as door step collection, but
focus on materials not collected at the door step” The authors seems to be oblivious
to the fact that many residents are forced to use the bring banks because of
lack of capacity in the doorstep service.
“The current recycling arrangements are that Yorwaste process
the recylclates at the Harewood Whin Material Recycling Facility and sell the
products to market. The current gross cost of recycling is £725k however this
is offset by the recyclate sales that total c£600k”.
The report fails to identify the “lead in time” for the purchase
of new vehicles. There are no milestones. It lacks any analysis of the number of missed bin
collections or their causes. It fails to say when sustained improvement could be
expected.
Altogether it amounts a bit of public posturing with no apology to the taxpayers who are being inconvenienced each day by vehicle breakdowns and trucks reaching their capacity limits.
Today’s failure report reveals that green waste wasn’t collected from part of the Heworth area because of inadequate “vehicle capacity”
Daily reports on missed bin collections can be found via this link click
Council needs to “come clean” about the extent of its resourcing problems
Another day and another raft of missed bin collections.
Mostly the failures are down to inadequate staffing, unreliable vehicles and full lorries.
Yet the Council has so far failed to say when replacement vehicles will arrive in the city.
…and there is a growing suspicion that other services are being depleted in a desperate attempt to plug the gaps in the waste collection service. One estate still has litter strewn around from collections which took place weeks ago.
No post recycling litter pick today (or for some time)Many litter bins are overflowing
Its mainly Haxby that missed out on recycling collections today (inadequate vehicle capacity). Some might feel that putting on an additional or larger vehicle on the round would be the obvious solution to this long standing issue. The collections will be rescheduled for Monday. This also applies to missed garden waste in Pinfold Court and recycling in Bishopdale Way
Outstanding household waste collections will take place in Gower Road tomorrow (Saturday)
Rather awkwardly the Council has started delivery of their “Our City” newspaper. The, £10,000 a time rag, also includes a pull out supplement detailing the merits of the Council’s recycling processes.
Residents will not find any performance data indicating the number of recycling collections that the Council misses nor the timetable for remedying issues with driver recruitment, staff vacancies, unreliable vehicles or truck capacity.
No doubt some residents in Haxby will immediately hurl the leaflets into the recycling box – before remembering that it won’t now be collected for at least 3 days!
