Agenda item

5.1  Members of the Task Group agreed with a point that another Member made around point 5.37 of the Minutes, which had been recorded as per below:

“In response, the Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Culture said that he had found the discussion useful. He had heard a clear commitment from Members that parks remained at a high standard, and continued to be a key Council offer to residents and visitors. There appeared to be a willingness to explore the capacity for and value of catering for large events. Finally, there was a view that community events and the charges attributed to them might be reviewed. This should help ensure that while there was still a community event offer, that the charges applied to them were more reflective of their size and the costs in officer time which were associated with them.”

5.2  The Member said that he felt that the Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Culture had confirmed that the view of the Task Group had been more equivocal around events than the passage suggested, and also that he had given his support towards this stance. The Member felt that the Task Group and the Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Culture had agreed that the approach towards events needed to be revisited. This was both towards the levels of support given to community events and also the extent to which the Council would work to enable large events to be hosted. The Member said that it had been agreed that if it was found that a revised approach to events would secure the maintaining of a high quality offer across parks which would not be secured otherwise, that the Council should pursue a revised approach.

5.3  Aside from this point, the Minutes were agreed as an accurate record.

5.4  The Chair noted that at the last meeting, Members had requested information around other borough’s experiences of moving from a free bulky waste collection service to a charging one, in terms of any impact on levels of flytipping. She advised that a paper had been appended to the Minutes in response to this.

5.5  After the Chair asked him to provide a brief summary of the report, Mark Griffin, Head of Environment and Waste Strategy for the Council, said that the paper brought together the best evidence which was available at this time.

5.6  The Head of Environment and Waste Strategy advised that available data from other local authority areas suggested that:

·  There was no direct relationship between a move to a bulky waste service and a significant increase in flytipping activity.

·  That a move to a charging model would have an impact on the number of bulky waste collections as some residents rationed their use of the service or chose alternatives.

5.7  A Member said that he would be keen to explore where the waste previously collected via a free bulky waste collection would be redirected to, if the impact of introducing a bulky waste collection charge was a reduction in use of the service. In particular, he asked whether there would be an impact on the volumes of waste collected through kerbside refuse collections due to residents breaking up bulky items and adding this waste to their general rubbish.

5.8  In response, the Head of Environment and Waste Strategy said that the evidence available suggested that residents who were dissuaded from continuing with a bulky waste service after charging had been introduced, in general used the alternative legal option which was the most convenient to them. In many cases this was through the use of Household Waste and Recycling Centres (Hackney residents were eligible to access services at the Hornsey Road centre).

5.9  The Head of Environment and Waste Strategy said that the level of data available would not enable the service to reach a fully evidenced position on any impact on residual waste collection tonnage that moving to a charging bulky waste service would bring.

5.10  However, the service was able to reach a reasonably informed view by considering the approaches and experiences of other local authorities, and to track whether or not after introducing a charging service they had returned to a free service model. This would help indicate whether or not the disbenefits of the policy change had been found to outweigh the benefits. The data available suggested that local authorities had not generally returned to a free model after introducing a charging one (an exception was Tower Hamlets, but this was understood to be a politically-based decision rather than one driven by officers).

5.10  In response to whether or not there could be a risk of residents breaking up items to add to their general refuse in response to an ending of free bulky waste collections, the Head of Environment and Waste Strategy said that he had not seen evidence to suggest that this was likely. However, operatives did notice and flag with their supervisors where unsuitable materials were being added to general household waste. Any rise in these cases post the intoriudcution of a bulky waste service would be identified, and the Head of Environment and Waste Strategy would be happy to feedback to Members on this and to discuss responses to this is applicable.

5.11  The Chair of the Commission noted that this discussion followed on from Members requesting further information around the experiences of other boroughs introducing chargeable bulky waste collections, in terms of any impact on levels of flytipping. She felt that the key section of the paper (for the purposes of this meeting) was the passage that explained that the data for a number of London boroughs suggested that there was no significant impact of a charging bulky waste service, either on flytipping or on street cleansing waste streams.

5.12  More than one Member said that they felt a move to chargeable bulky waste collection service was fair in principle. One said that it would help communicate the message that there was a cost associated with waste collection.

5.13  A Member asked a question around any enforcement activity that the service was doing to tackle any flytipping among people working within the private rented sector. He asked whether this activity could strengthen the case for the Council introducing licensing within the sector.

5.14  In response, the Head of Environment and Waste Strategy said that data on flytipping had been shared with the area of the Council exploring the scope for licensing the private rented sector. However, he understood that the data available had not been sufficient to enable licensing on the grounds of anti-social behaviour within the sector.

5.15  The Head of Environment and Waste Strategy said that in relation to the Bulky Waste Service, work was done to try to tackle abuse of it by private sector landlords, who were ineligible for it and were expected to pay for collections via the Commercial Waste service.

5.16  The Chair thanked the Head of Environment and Waste Strategy for the paper he had provided and for answering questions. These had included queries on topics outside of the discussion item, and she appreciated this.