Councillors to consider progress of waste collection review

Members of the council’s place overview and scrutiny committee are due to meet at Allerdale House in Workington on Wednesday (January 7) to get the update.

It is recommended that they note the progress to date on each of the agreed recommendations from November 2024, consider the effectiveness of the project to date and provides their own recommendations and observations if necessary.

The report states that the executive committee approved an in-house delivery model following a comprehensive review of all options for the council’s waste collection services and it will include the transfer of Allerdale Waste Services staff under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) into the council to facilitate the new model of collection.

It adds: “The in-house delivery model was agreed and on the 20th January 20, 2025, Allerdale Waste Services (AWS) staff were successfully transferred (TUPE) back in-house. This followed a period of consultation with the AWS workforce and their union representatives.”

According to the report the four-week informal public consultation on the proposed recommended operating model of:

• Providing fortnightly domestic general refuse collections with a 180-litre
  capacity wheeled bin;
• Providing fortnightly domestic twin-stream recycling collections with two
  180-litre capacity wheeled bins;
• Providing fortnightly domestic garden waste collections March to November with 240-litre capacity wheeled bins with an option for additional bins to be collected with a charge.

Following the consultation responses were as follows:

• 58.5 per cent of responses were from the Allerdale area;
• 63.5 per cent of respondents had only one to two people in the household;
• 58.25 per cent of respondents felt it was important to have a consistent service;
• 92.62 per cent of respondents felt it was important to encourage recycling;
• 40.4 per cent of respondents who expressed an opinion disagreed with a fortnightly collection in Allerdale;
• 53.4 per cent of respondents agreed with a change to bins from boxes in Carlilse for recycling;
• 48.6 per cent of respondents who expressed an opinion agreed with an increase to fortnightly paper and card collections in Allerdale;
• 91.13 per cent of respondents did have a garden;
• 64.1 per cent of residents did agree to a seasonal collection from March to November for garden waste collections;
• 42 per cent of respondents agreed with a charge for additional garden waste bins.

According to the report the executive committee recommended to the full council the addition of £2,400,000 to the capital programme, to be financed by prudential borrowing, to purchase additional receptacles required for general waste and recycling.

In addition, the executive recommended to the full council, the addition of £12,080,000 to the capital programme, to be financed by prudential borrowing, to purchase the replacement waste collection fleet between 2025 and 2032 and both recommendations were agreed last January.