Issue - meetings

ORDERED

That Executive approve:

1.    The purchase of an additional 12,000 brown garden waste bins in accordance with the procurement arrangements set out at paragraph 6.6 of the submitted report.

2.    The virement of capital resource from the Traffic Signals scheme to fund the purchase and delivery of the additional bins.

3.    That delegated authority was provided to the Director of Environment and Community Services for the purchase of additional waste bins, in line with service demand.

The Director of Environment and Community Services submitted a report for Executive consideration. The report sought approval for the purchase of an additional 12,000 bins to respond to the increased demand for the garden waste subscription service. The virement of capital resource from the Traffic Signals scheme would fund the purchase and delivery of the additional bins, and the report sought delegated authority for the Director of Environment and Community Services to purchase additional waste bins, in line with service demand.

Following the Executive Report of 21 November 2023 the Council purchased 30,000 residual waste bins and 14,000 garden waste bins at a cost of £1.2m as part of the overall Waste Strategy Review.  A total of £1.135m had been spent on new bins to date. The reason for replacing bins was to move green waste collection off diamond lift bins and on to comb lift bins reducing vehicle costs and increasing resilience within the service. This also supported the movement to a more sustainable waste collection service through the reduction of side waste and other ancillary issues, promoting recycling rates.

On the 8 March 2024 the Council introduced a chargeable green waste service and introduced fortnightly collection for residual waste. The Council expected 9,300 subscribers. The 14,000 bins the Council had purchased were expected to cover subscribers to the service and had a contingency level of bins following the Council’s decision to implement a chargeable service.  The demand for the garden waste subscription service had increased significantly over anticipated demand modelling. The  service currently had over 19,000 subscriptions, which was 9,000 more than anticipated and this had resulted in the need for more brown garden waste bins to be ordered urgently to meet demand.  In order to meet this additional demand, and further potential increased demand throughout the year, an additional 12,000 brown garden bins were required at an additional cost of £0.376m.

As part of the Revenue and Capital Budget Forecast Outturn position at Quarter Two 2023/24 report to Executive on 21 November 2023, Executive approved the allocation of £1.2m in the Capital Programme in order to fund wheeled bin replacements as part of a comprehensive Waste Strategy Review.

The additional 12,000 green waste bins would cost £0.376m and it was proposed that this was funded from the remaining budget of £0.065m and a virement of £0.311m from the traffic signals capital budget that was funded from Council resource which might be decommitted due to the receipt of unplanned grant from TVCA as explained below.

Subsequent to the approved Capital Programme by Council on 8 March 2024, TVCA had announced a total of £2.5m in grant funding for the upgrade of traffic signals across the Tees Valley, for which Middlesbrough was the lead authority. This included £0.5m allocated to Middlesbrough. This grant funding could have replaced some of the Council capital resource previously set aside to fund this work.  It was therefore recommended that £0.311m be vired from the Traffic Signals scheme to fund the purchase and delivery  ...  view the full minutes text for item 105