By Rich Lehmann
All the way back in 2021, the administration at Swale made a decision to re-tender for a company to take on its waste collection services. The outcome of the process that followed was the council opting to go with the only provider which submitted a final bid – Suez. Despite only having one bid on the table, Suez's bid was considered a good one and represented good value. Having said this, I think it should also be noted that commencing a new tender process at that point would have taken months and cost tens of thousands of pounds.
Unfortunately, since Suez’s takeover in March, waste collection has become one of Faversham’s most frustrating public services, plagued by inefficiencies, a lack of communication from the council, and an overwhelming volume of issues. If Faversham residents groups on Facebook had trending topics, I'm sure the hashtag #bingate would have been pretty high up during most of April, May and June.
DELAYED DATA AND DYSFUNCTIONAL ROUTES
When Suez initially took on the contract, the expectation was that collection rounds would be fine-tuned and efficient, minimising disruptions. However, a major problem was brewing before the changeover of providers even took place: crucial round data, expected months before the contract began, arrived far too late. The data that finally arrived in late January (which I finally got a chance to see in April) appeared to have been set up hastily, without the necessary sense checking to ensure they were fit for purpose. Rural areas previously served by standrd ('full size') lorries were now mostly served by innefficient narrow vehicles and narrow urban rounds in Faversham previously served by narrow vehicles had been assigned to the larger ones, apparently based on the naïve assumption that no one would park their cars near tight corners!
In addition to this, the initial expectation of the council was that around 20-30% of the Borough would see a change in their collection day, which seemed manageable in theory. When the data finally arrived, we learned that over 60% of households were getting a change of collection day. This huge change, along with changes to the staff assigned to each route, left residents confused, inconvenienced and, in many cases, dealing with days’ worth of uncollected waste. Missed collections became an unfortunate norm rather than an exception, leading to growing piles of rubbish on streets and a steep rise in complaints from residents who were understandably frustrated with the failing service.
SYSTEM COLLAPSE AND REPORTING OVERLOAD
The widespread missed collections and altered schedules created an overwhelming influx of reports to the council’s systems. The online reporting system was quickly inundated, unable to keep pace with the sheer volume of complaints and the customer service lines were overloaded too.
As missed pickups accumulated, it became impossible for the council's contract monitoring officers staff to isolate and address the systemic issues causing the failures, and the cases that were identified and considered 'fixed' were in many cases simply missed again a week or two later. A situation which was intensely frustrating for residents and officers alike.
COMMUNICATION FAILURES
Communication (or lack of) from the council to residents has also been a source of great frustration. Initially the plan was to report (on social media) the percentage of bins which had been one of the 3%, it means very little.
Proactive communication is not viable, as even when the council’s officers are informed of Suez’s plans for catch up rounds for the following day in their evening meetings, those plans fail to materialise so frequently that it was considered best to say nothing rather than cause additional frustration by making promises we have no control in seeing through. This void of communication has left residents and council members alike with little to no confidence in what to expect.
MID-SEPTEMBER RE-ROUTE: A GLIMMER OF HOPE?
In mid-September, Suez initiated a major re-routing effort to address the widespread issues, finally implementing changes that, for the first time, seemed to make a significant impact. Collections began to stabilise, and missed pickups dropped noticeably. By November, waste collection was at a point of reliability that the community should have seen back in May. It has been a relief for many households to have their waste collected consistently, without the missed pickups and disruptions that marked the earlier months of the contract.
However, the fact remains that this level of service improvement arrived much later than promised.
Residents have endured months of substandard waste collections and huge levels of frustration, and in some cases genuine anxiety as a result of the poor service and lack of effective communication.
ONGOING FRUSTRATIONS
Despite these improvements, certain areas around Faversham still experience frustrating and recurring issues. Some streets, continue to face missed collections week after week. No matter what interventions the council officers put in place, these same issues seem to re-emerge, often within a matter of days. This repetitive cycle of missed collections and unresolved issues casts a shadow over the service improvements made since September.
LOOKING AHEAD: TRANSPARENCY NEEDED
The introduction of Suez as Swale's waste collection provider was expected to bring a seamless, efficient service to the community. I firmly believe that this could still be the case, but there is still work to be done.
Another key piece of work currently being undertaken is a full Scrutiny Review of the tendering process and the implementation period of the new contract. I am chairing a panel of councillors to look closely at every aspect of the new contract and the changeover. We have identified a number of failures both on the part of Suez and at the council, and will be creating a report to present to the Swale Environment and Climate Change committee in January.
The report will identify the key areas of failure (both from Suez and from the council) and will contain a list of recommendations for the council going forward to hopefully ensure we don't see a repeat of the pain of the past few months.
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