To received and consider the above report.

Naomi Markham, Waste Strategy Manager introduced the report and directed Members to the following key points:

Ø  The Council wanted to introduce a permit scheme for the Maidenhead Civic Amenity Site to limit access to non-residents. Only those that lived within in the Borough would be able to access it.

Ø  A scheme would be implemented for business users which covered vans, lorries and sign written vehicles so that those that were permitted to use the site, still could.

Ø  The scheme was a response to what was happening in neighbouring borough’s that had already introduced a permit scheme.

Ø  RBWM residents would still be able to use the amenity site in Surrey if they lived in the south of the Borough as it was too far to travel to Maidenhead to use the Borough’s Civic Amenity Site.

Ø  16% of people using the Civic Amenity Site were not from within the Borough, and since the neighbouring local authorities had introduced a permit scheme to access their Civic Amenity Site, there might be a rise in that percentage trying to use the Borough’s.

Ø  The scheme would help track where waste was coming from.

Ø  Would also act as a checks and balance on waste.

Ø  During the survey carried out to monitor where waste was coming from, it highlighted areas such as Aylesbury and Swindon which were significant distances away from the Civic Amenity Site.

Ø  16% of non-residents waste equates to approximately £94,000 per year cost to resident tax payers.

Ø  If the Borough introduced the permit scheme, it would cut out 16% of waste which would also make the site quieter for residents to use and will also save the Borough money.

Ø  The scheme would be implemented in April 2017.

Ø  No set up costs had been worked out as the type of scheme to be implemented had not been decided on yet.

Ø  Some ideas for how the scheme would work included the use of advantage cards to access the site which would have a very low cost of implementation.

Ø  The cost of implementing the scheme would not cost nearly as much as was being saved by prevent non-residents of the Borough from using the site.

Ø  The Waste Strategy Manager confirmed it was possible to bring a paper back to Panel for scrutiny prior to a final decision on the scheme was due to be made.

Ø  Fly tipping was already an issue in the Borough and was costing the Borough in the region of £140,000 per year to clear it.

Ø  The permits would not limit what could be accepted at the Civic Amenity Site from residents unless they were in a van carrying hard core, the limit for hard core is six bags per month. There were no plans to charge residents for domestic weight and there were no limits to how many times residents could access the site or to how much residents to take to the site.

Ø  A permit for a van would take two days but other permits would be obtained by residents before they were needed so it could be displayed in their car window. If a resident did not have a permit and turned up at the site without one, they would need to show proof of identification and address and they would still be able to use the site.

Ø  The Waste Strategy Manager would be looking at it being a one time use  permit for vans. She was also testing other ideas for best practice to make the scheme as straight forward and simple for residents as possible.

Ø  If residents in the south of the Borough used the Civic Amenity Site in Bagshot, they would still be able to continue using it as the Borough paid for RBWM’s portion of its use.

Ø  Veolia had confirmed that other councils were using hand held technology so that out of Borough/non-resident users were either turned away from using the Civic Amenity Site or, they were charged to use it. The Lead Member was keen to address the Borough’s own residents first before looking at how to manage out of Borough and non-residents for the use of the site.

Ø  The site did accept trade waste but in a different area of the site to domestic waste. If using the site for trade waste, users had to go to a weigh bridge and pay to use it.

Ø  The permit scheme for the Civic Site were for residents waste only, so no trade waste would be accepted. There would be no changes to the way the Borough dealt with and accepted trade waste.

Ø  The Waste Strategy Manager confirmed the costs of disposing of asbestos was included within the contract with Veolia.

The Chairman stated that it was necessary to keep the scheme as simple as possible for residents. He agreed with the proposals but wanted the scheme kept as straight forward as possible for residents to dispose of their waste. Cllr Lion commented that most residents had an advantage card so it made sense to use that as the first port of call for the scheme as would keep costs to a minimum.

Cllr Sharpe suggested carrying out a further survey following other local authorities now charging non-residents for using their Civic Amenity Sites to see if the 16% non-resident use of the Boroughs site had risen. The Waste Strategy Manager confirmed that the survey cost the council approximately £1,500 to carry out.

Cllr Beer stated that the cost to the council of non-resident waste was £94,000 but, the KPI was only £55,000; he felt the KPI should be higher than that. The Waste Strategy Manager confirmed that the KPI of £55,000 was only for the first year of the scheme and accounted for the costs of implementation.

v  Action – Figures from the scheme to be reviewed after the scheme has been set up.

The Waste Strategy Manager confirmed that the firm that run the Civic Amenity Site would ‘meet and greet’ users at the gate to direct people to the correct area for disposal of their waste while also checking permits and if they were authorised to use the site. The meet and greet staff would also be able to encourage recycling of certain waste instead of it all going to landfill.

Cllr Sharpe suggested the scheme should be widely communicated to residents and businesses in the Borough through Around the Royal Borough publication and over a period of time to help get the message out. Cllr Beer felt it was unnecessary to run the survey again as it was a lot of money to show something which seemed obvious; that when other authorities starting charging non-residents to use their Civic Amenity Sites, the use of non-residents at the Borough’s Civic Amenity Site would rise. Simon Fletcher, Strategic Director of Operations stated the fear was that if it was not already happening, people were running out of places to take their rubbish without being charged so they were likely to take in to the Borough’s Civic Amenity Site as there were no charges in place just yet.

Cllr Hunt stated due to the Green Belt, if people did not have permits or, they were from outside of the Borough, it would be easier for them to fly-tip than to take it to a Civic Amenity Site. There were a lot of rural roads that were easy for people to dump their rubbish without being seen. She added the cost of retrieving fly-tipped rubbish was being paid by residents. Press releases were issued but it was difficult to get articles into parish publications; but parishes needed notification of press releases so they had time to include them in their publication. The Strategic Waste Manager confirmed there was a marketing professional within her team that she would pass on the parish publications deadlines to so that press releases could align and be included to help tackle fly-tipping in the Borough.

v  Action – the Strategic Waste Manager to look into including a flyer or leaflet in with the Council Tax statements about fly-tipping and the possible permit scheme.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the Panel endorsed the recommendations to Cabinet with the addition of the following recommendation:

Ø  To make it clear that trade waste is continued to be handled and charged separately from this scheme.