Government

Better bin buying could save councils £70m a year

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has released a report stating that councils could save £70 million every year through better bin procurement.

Better bin buying could save councils £70m a year

Household Waste Collection: Procurement Savings Opportunities’, developed with Local Partnerships (a joint agency of the Local Government Association and Her Majesty’s Treasury), aims to identify how local authorities can make savings by joining up their procurement processes for waste management goods.

The report includes best practice case studies that highlight efficient procurement partnerships, and identifies the scope for savings from national standards and specifications of waste goods.

It collates findings from a short study of both the public and private sectors and information from experts in this field, and states that councils could save up to 10 per cent on vehicles and 35 per cent on wheeled bins through ‘clearer specification and procuring in larger volumes in partnership with other councils’, totalling more than £70 million of savings a year.

Report details

According to the report, there are three main types of barrier that may need to be addressed to enable a local authority’s statutory duty to provide ‘value for money’ to be fully realised: political barriers; technical barriers; and management barriers.

These include:

  • local authorities wanting to differentiate themselves from neighbouring councils through a ‘stand-out colour selection or “branding” of vehicles and wheeled bins’;
  • avoidance of large-scale procurement due to uncertainty in future funding levels and legislation;
  • a lack of transparency when it comes to sharing commercial information; and
  • a lack of internal procurement expertise.

Repeating the incorrect notion that source separation necessitates more bins, the report reads: ‘Data collected from a sample of frameworks and procurements shows a wide range of typical specifications in use or available to councils with regard to wheeled bins, refuse sacks, and refuse collection vehicles… local differences in collection processes and containers can be due to the balance struck between source separated systems (which require more bins or boxes, but simpler and cheaper post-collection handling) and co-mingled collection (which require fewer bins but more infrastructure to separate the waste at a Materials Recovery Facility).’

It adds: ‘While councils should tailor their services to local needs, especially given the differences between urban, suburban and rural communities, the lack of any common standard on bins or rubbish trucks, or colours of recycling bins, increases the costs of procurement.’

Recommendations

As such, it details a range of recommendations for local government that could reduce the cost of waste/recycling bins and vehicles. These include:

  • establishing a procurement ‘pipeline’ on the pipeline section of Contracts Finder (the government's main advertising platform for both central and local government contracts), that local authorities can use to see when others are due to procure similar refuse collection vehicles and containers;
  • harmonising collection processes with neighbouring authorities with a view to reducing product variations and aiding high-volume procurement;
  • joint resourcing of partnerships through financial contributions, staff secondments, facilities, services, joint posts and training, and some pooling of resources;
  • producing standardised specifications and procurement documents for waste goods;
  • developing a set of benchmarks for waste goods and waste vehicles;
  • making financial data more openly available to enable councils and members of the public to assess whether value for money is being achieved;
  • using different coloured bin lids with a black or grey wheelie bin, as it is less expensive that purchasing a bin made entirely of coloured plastic (the report estimates that a local authority buying 50,000 wheeled bins in a bright red virgin plastic may be spending £250,000 more than it needs to);
  • replacing wheeled bins ‘every decade or so’ in bulk, rather than when needed; and
  • procuring bins in higher volumes (i.e. in units of 50,000 rather than 1,000, which can reportedly save around 35 per cent in costs);

‘Councils should be making the sensible savings’

Speaking after the release of the procurement report, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said: “For too long rubbish town hall procurement policies have wasted taxpayers’ money as councils have worked in isolation when they should have been working together to deliver a better deal for local taxpayers.

“People want and deserve a comprehensive bin collection service in return for their council tax, which is why this government is working with town halls to increase the frequency and quality of rubbish and recycling collections.

“Instead of cutting frontline services or introducing stealth taxes such as charges for the collection of garden rubbish, councils should be making the sensible savings such as more joint working, better procurement and new technology.”

Digital waste services project

To further explore how councils can standardise their approach to waste services, DCLG has provided funding to a digital waste services project.

The Local Waste Service Standards Project aims to establish and implement local digital service standards to boost joint working, increase transparency, and give councils greater flexibility to switch suppliers more easily at lower cost.

It is hoped that this will help reduce cost and therefore potentially reduce the council tax liability, or redirect savings into other services.

The councils working on the project to create local digital standards for waste services are:

  • Adur and Worthing Councils;
  • Brentwood Borough Council;
  • Bristol City Council;
  • Calderdale Council;
  • Chelmsford City Council; and
  • Luton Borough Council

DCLG’s increasing involvement in waste issues

This pilot marks the latest waste initiative that DCLG has funded. Two weeks ago, DCLG awarded £11.1 million to local authorities with weekly waste collections so that they could implement recycling reward schemes, and earlier this year it pushed through new legislation that bans councils in England from charging residents for using household waste recycling centre (despite half of respondents to a discussion paper opposing the proposal).

The department also previously launched a £250-million Weekly Collection Support Scheme to help local authorities support the implementation or reinstatement of weekly residual waste collections, which Pickles has previously called a ‘human right’. (However, only one of the 85 successful bids to the fund, from Stoke-on-Trent City Council, actually outlined that it would use the money to revert back to weekly residual waste collections, and Stoke’s plans have since been dropped as weekly collections were ultimately deemed too expensive, despite the funding.)

Last year, Pickles also released controversial weekly collection guidance, dubbed the ‘Bin Bible’, to ‘show how [English] councils can deliver a comprehensive and frequent rubbish and recycling collection service, and deliver practical savings from common sense steps that do not harm the quality of the service that local taxpayers receive’, and has voiced his wish to legislate for ‘minimum service standards’ for waste collections.

Further to this, central government is now awaiting royal assent for its Deregulation Bill, which will abolish the powers given to local authorities that allow them to penalise households for incorrectly presenting waste.

Find out more about the ‘Household Waste Collection: Procurement Savings Opportunities’ report.

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