Pre-booking at council tips
Case reference FOI2024/00009
Published 23 January 2024
Request
The council tips are run by a private company. Prior to covid, you were able to arrive and deposit rubbish etc without a pre-booked slot. The normal contract terms a local council has with a private company for such an operation includes incentivisation to minimise the amount of waste going to landfill, for example by employing operatives to remove from the deposited waste items that can be recycled, Clearly now, post covid, with a pre-booking required, the total amount of waste ending up in landfill is going to be significantly less, because less people are able to just arrive with waste (since they haven't pre-booked), but this reduction is not because of any performance from the private company.
I would like to understand how this de facto change in the public use of tip facilities was accounted for by the council with respect to these contracts, both historically, at present and going forwards, otherwise it is reasonable to conclude that the private company has hit the incentive performance targets that were historically in place without actually doing any effort or changing any behaviour on their part.
Response
In relation to the performance targets within the contract they are based on recycling and recovery rates and not on the tonnes of residual waste handled at the Household Recycling Centres (HRC's). These targets remain unchanged, because following implementation of the bookings system at the HRC's across Herefordshire, the amount of residual waste deposited at those facilities did, as you suggest, drop. However, all of the other waste streams deposited at the HRC's have also dropped, by approximately the same amount. Therefore the recycling and recovery performance levels at the HRC's have remained at a similar level, so the contractors' positions as regards performance targets remain unaffected by the introduction of the booking system.
There are other points that are worth considering when looking at the effects of the booking system. One is the booking system's effectiveness in reducing the amount of commercial waste deposited at the HRC's, which will also reduce the tonnages being processed. Consideration should also be given to the fact that overall tonnages being deposited at the HRC's will result in reduced costs to the council.
It should also be noted that the majority of residual waste in Herefordshire is sent for Energy Recovery through incineration, not to landfill. Less than 1% of Herefordshire's non-recyclable waste is landfilled.
Documents
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