21 April 2024
It would be remiss of me not to write something about the subject which has been the talk of Swale for the past month – bins.
The problems we've seen with late, or in many cases entirely missed, collections across large parts of the borough have understandably generated a significant volume of calls to our customer service team and calls and emails to councillors. They have also generated a significant number of posts and comments on Facebook.
I am very sorry for the inconvenience and distress that this service has caused across the borough during the past month. The switchover has clearly been a failure, although possibly not to the degree that many would believe. There are large parts of the borough that have received a 'perfect' service so far, and it is primarily the rural areas which have been missed (in many cases consistently). I'd like to share the reasons why this is, and what Suez have been, and are continuing to do, to remedy the situation.
Firstly, to respond to a question which I've seen raised, the reason we no longer have a contract with Biffa is simply that the contract we had with them expired. Along with our partners in Ashford and Maidstone, we put out a tender and Suez were the only company to bid for that contract.
More on this can be read online at www.tinyurl.com/SBCwaste
Some general reasons why the rounds are currently taking longer include:
New routes – the routes have been redrawn to be more efficient and resilient in the long term. We have more vehicles out in the same parts of the borough on the same day. This means that when a crew member is suddenly unable to work, (this work has a higher rate of injury than most), or there is a vehicle breakdown, we have other vehicles nearby who can pick up the rest of that round. The completion of the new routes will get faster and more efficient with practice, but it may take a few weeks.
New processes – the crews now have handheld devices which can be used to register which properties have been collected from and which haven't. This additional piece of work may slow crews down as they get used to it, but in the long term will bring benefits in terms of more accurate data and a greater ability to send crews out to missed areas without them needing to be reported by the public.
The main reason the rural rounds have been hit disproportionately is that the new routes have not been assigned as efficiently as they should have been in terms of areas served by narrow lorries and those that have full-size lorries. There are large parts of the borough which can easily be navigated by the larger trucks and were under the previous contract. Suez have acknowledged this and are making changes to the routes to switch more properties and areas onto the full-size trucks. This will greatly improve their ability to complete collection rounds.
Suez have also employed a number of new staff, both on the driver side and the loader side, and this week, (week beginning 15th April), we are beginning to see the effect of those additional staff and a much greater proportion of collections being completed on the scheduled day. I am hopeful that this trend will continue and that we will reach a state of normal service by early to mid-May.
Rich Lehmann
rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk
http://kentgreencouncillors.news/
Promoted by T. Valentine on behalf of R.Lehmann (Swale Green Party) c/o PO Box 78066, London, SE16 9GQ
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