20/22
In accordance with
Council Procedure Rule 3.1(f), five Members of the Council had
requested that a Special Meeting of Full Council be called to
provide for ‘the attendance by a representative of FCC, the
Council’s Waste Collection Contractor, for the purpose of
presenting a report to Members on its performance in the delivery
of the waste service followed by Questions and
Answers’.
(a)
Chairman’s Introductory
Comments
In introducing the agenda item, the Chairman made
the following comments:
‘Members, before we begin the main item of the business this
afternoon, I want to make some introductory remarks.
This is a
special meeting of the Council. It has been called for the
purpose of allowing FCC to attend to present a report on its
performance in delivering the waste service, followed by Questions
and Answers. Mr Steve Longdon and
Mr Brian Ashby are here representing FCC. I understand that
they will be making a statement and that Cllr. Keith Baldry will
then make a short response setting out the council’s
position, followed by the Leader of the Council in her capacity as
the chair of the Waste Working Group. I will then open the
meeting to Members to ask their questions of Mr Longdon and Mr Ashby. I would ask that
Members ask questions rather than make statements and confine
themselves to the purpose why the five Members requested a meeting
to be called.
Before I
invite Mr Longdon and Mr Ashby to
address the Council, I must remind Members that the Council has a
contractual relationship with FCC. Consequently, the Council
is required to comply with the obligations and procedures provided
for in that contract. To that end, Members should follow the
advice given previously and should refrain from saying or doing
anything that might cause the Council itself to be in breach of
contract.’
(b)
Statement from FCC
Representative(s)
The FCC Representative(s) proceeded to make the
following comments:
-
FCC
Environment understood South Hams residents’ frustration and
annoyance with the continued disruption to the waste and recycling
services and wished to sincerely apologise for the failure to
deliver the service that was expected and deserved;
-
In
particular, the representatives wished to say sorry for the
difficulties experienced with the reintroduction of the garden
waste collection service. There were
reasons for this but it was clarified that, when the service was
rolled out, FCC had recruited sufficient staff required under the
contract to deliver the service.
However, since then staff had left the contract and the
organisation had been unable to replace them. FCC was operating an average absence level of 14%
and, along with other issues which had made ongoing recruitment
challenging, this had made delivering the service problematic.
Notwithstanding these issues, residents had a right to expect a
good and reliable service;
-
At all
stages, FCC had sought to work with the Council to improve and
resolve the situation and this remained the case;
-
Finally,
FCC remained fully committed to ensuring that everybody had a
garden waste collection service on a reasonably regular basis
whilst the ongoing issues were resolved. In addition, the
organisation was looking at how it could adjust its collection
rounds to ensure that the same households were not missed each
time.
(c)
Cllr Baldry (lead Executive Member)
Response
In his response, Cllr Baldry advised
that:
-
he could
not over emphasis just how angry and frustrated he was at the
ongoing situation;
-
with the
support of his fellow Executive Members and Council officers, they
had all worked tirelessly in an attempt to resolve the
problems. At this point, Cllr Baldry
wished to put on record his gratitude to Council officers for their
efforts in incredibly difficult circumstances in an attempt to
protect the reputation of the Council;
-
daily
operational meetings between Council officers and FCC
representatives continued to be held;
-
he
remained fully committed to the roll-out of the Devon Aligned
Service across the entire South Hams district;
-
he wished
to personally apologise to all residents that the Garden Waste
Service had spectacularly failed within six days of its
re-launch. In so doing, Cllr Baldry
confirmed that he had no intention to let this current situation
continue.
(d)
Cllr Pearce (Leader of Council)
Comments
Cllr Pearce echoed all of the comments expressed by
Cllr Baldry and, in particular, emphasised her anger at the current
service level and added her thanks for the work of Council
officers. In addition, Cllr Pearce
provided an update on the work of the Waste Working Group and the
paramount concern for all Members being the best interests of local
residents.
In striving for the service to return to a
satisfactory level, Cllr Pearce informed that, whilst all Members
were fully aware of the legal advice that they had received, she
could confirm that a formal letter had been sent to
FCC.
(e)
Member Questions
In the ensuing Member Question and Answer session,
the following points were raised:
-
When
questioned, the FCC representatives advised that, due to the nature
of ongoing discussions with Council Officers, they were unable to
provided responses to queries on issues that included:
o
whether or
not FCC was fulfilling its contractual obligations;
o
whether or
not FCC would ever be able to deliver a service (to an acceptable
standard) in accordance with these obligations and, if this was
felt to be possible, how was it intended to achieve this
objective;
o
a number
of requests for, during the interim period, a regular, but less
frequent, Garden Waste Collection service to be
delivered;
o
whether or
not it was accepted by FCC that the new collection rounds were
unsuitable;
o
the lack
of an appropriate Improvement Plan that was initially promised to
be in place before the end of 2021;
o
a timeline
for when service levels would reach an acceptable
standard;
-
It was
noted that FCC had seen a slight improvement in its staff retention
levels over the last few months.
However, this trend only related to loaders and the challenges in
recruiting (and retaining) drivers remained despite driver salaries
being increased considerably. At the
time when the Garden Waste Service was re-introduced, Members were
again advised that staff numbers were at an appropriate level,
however, unfortunately a vast number left the employ of the
organisation within weeks of the re-launch;
-
In respect
of the contents of staff exit interviews, the representatives
informed that they were able to provide summary information to
interested Members. The number of staff
vacancies was exacerbated further by the high levels of staff
sickness absence;
-
With
regard to a specific example of a repeat failing on the medical /
clinical collection service, the representatives asked that further
information be sent to them outside of the Meeting;
-
Regarding
the restructuring of the collection rounds, the representatives
stated that, in order to comply with the requirements of the Devon
Aligned Service, they had to be changed;
-
The FCC
Operations Director confirmed that Senior Officers had his personal
contact details and he stated that he had no intention of resigning
from his position;
-
A number
of Members vented their frustrations that the FCC representatives
claimed that they empathised with Members and were aware of the
extent of the ill-feeling being expressed by residents. These Members reiterated that residents and town
and parish councils were not interested in the repeated excuses
that had been given by FCC over the last twelve months and only
wanted to see an acceptable service being delivered;
-
Members
could not understand how FCC was able to provide an excellent
service to other local authorities but was continuing to provide a
woefully inadequate service to the Council and its
residents. In response, the
representatives advised that there were a specific set of
circumstances that were pertinent to this Contract and these were
part of the ongoing discussions with Council Officers. Nonetheless, Members felt that the mission
statement on the FCC website was not reflective of service
performance in the South Hams and the request was made to the
representatives to review the contents of the website;
-
The
representatives gave a number of assurances that FCC had looked at
every single aspect of the Contract on a number of occasions in an
attempt to rectify the current service performance;
-
Despite
the responses given by the representatives, Members repeatedly
stated that staff were advising them that they were not being
listened to by their FCC supervisors or management. As a result, staff morale was perceived to be very
low.
At this point, the
Chairman thanked the representatives for their attendance and
proceeded to formally close the Special Council Meeting.