MORE control over collection staff, £2 million in savings and use of Thurrock businesses were the key factors as Thurrock Council spelled out a series of new contracts dealing with waste and recycling in the borough.
Cllr Mike Revell, Cabinet member for Environment, said: “We have had a seven year contract with Veolia, but it runs out in April this year. Rather than continue with one big contract we decided to split it into various sections.”
In all, seven contracts were tendered for and have been let. The largest — the kerbside collection of waste and recycling — has been won by an in-house council bid.
Cllr Revell took the opportunity to make reference to the quality of the collections during the snowy weather.
Cllr Revell continued: “The success of the in-house bid will mean we have more control over the collection staff. For example if conditions determine they can’t go out and collect they will have been retrained and can be redeployed on tasks such as gritting the streets.”
He added: “Tenders were invited for seven different aspects of the waste and recycling process allowing us to look at a more competitive system of tendering and enabled more Thurrock-based firms to be involved in the process.
“The result has given us a greater, more market-oriented way forward and will makes it possible for us to have a more flexible and responsive service where it matters – at a local level for our residents.
“It also produced a saving of over £2 million for this coming year, giving us a better service with better value for money for our council tax-payers.
The winners of the seven tenders were:
Waste and Recycling Collection – Provision of Waste and Recycling Collection Services (including the operation of recycling bring-banks) — Thurrock Council
Civic Amenity and Household Waste Recycling Centres – Provision of management and operational services for the two Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRC) / Civic Amenity (CA) sites owned by the council — Veolia
Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) – Provision of processing and reprocessing for defined parts of the collected waste — Nordic Recycling (Tilbury)
Composting – Provision of processing and reprocessing capacity for composting (garden waste from HWRC) — Veolia
In Vessel Composting (IVC) / Anaerobic Digestion (AD) – Provision of processing and reprocessing capacity for blue-bin collected waste — Verdant
Disposal – Provision of disposal for parts of the collected waste that has to go to landfill — Veolia
Interim treatment — Waste-to-energy process — Waste Recycling Group (WRG).
