The Chairman welcomed all to the meeting and informed all attending of the order that the meeting would be conducted.

To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies for absence were received from Parish Councillor Pat McDonald.

To receive any declarations of interest.

There were declarations of interest received.

To consider the background report and receive a presentation from SERCO.

Ben Smith, Head of Commissioning, Infrastructure, introduced the report to the Panel. Ben Smith then handed over to Ronnie Coutts, MD of SERCO to give their presentation. Ronnie Coutts initially apologised to the Panel and to all watching the meeting and informed them that SERCO were working very hard to provide a seamless service for residents and were working really hard to stabilise the service. Ronnie Coutts handed over to Katy Bassett, Regional Director, to go through the very detailed presentation.

The Panel then took the public question from Mr Ed Wilson which was that he had raised a petition on the council website calling for weekly bin collections after Covid, with 5000 signatures but no debate had taken place on the matter. There had been thousands of complaints. When will the council have a debate on this very important matter? The communication around the change had been appalling from the council, who was in charge? There had been a major change attempted by the council and its contractors of waste collection, all within 6 weeks which would normally take six months to plan and implement a major change, this was a major failure, who was responsible and accountable from the council for making that decision? The council had spent £4.5 million pounds on investing in kit to collect bins, the council owned the lorries and teckal provisions are available to bring this service in-house, when would this service be brought in-house?

Ben Smith informed the Panel that with respect to a council-wide debate on the service and its operating model, whether it was in-house, whether it was commissioned or whether it was under the current contract, this debate that was taking place in the Communities Overview and Scrutiny Panel tonight in this forum was an opportunity to explore the current issues and also enables us to reflect on the weekly service that was being delivered that was prized by the residents as the petition clearly showed. The fact that the council were forced into an alternate weekly model by something that none of us could not have predicted or imagined would have ever happened in terms of the pandemic and the impact it would have had, but as the guidelines and government advice changed on that towards the end of the first wave, there was no mandate from the council or from residents to keep to the alternate week collection model hence the council moved back to the weekly model. The debate could start here tonight as there are no scheduled reports for Cabinet about whether the current model that the council were working under, the commissioned contractual model was the right model or not. The contract was awarded just over twelve months ago following a full competitive process which was approved by Cabinet in terms of what the council went to the market for and the bids that were received and the contract that was awarded.

The investments in the vehicles, there were options in the contract  ...  view the full minutes text for item 98.