Fortnightly rubbish collections and weekly recycling collections look set to be introduced in Cornwall next year.

Cornwall Council’s Cabinet agreed yesterday to press ahead with awarding a new contract for the service which will change in April 2020.

The current contract ends on March 31, 2020, and the council has decided to alter collections in a bid to drive up recycling rates. The actual switch to fortnightly residual waste and weekly recycling and food waste collections will begin to be phased in during June 2021, and rolled out to the whole of Cornwall by May 2022.

Under the new proposals recycling and food waste will be collected weekly while black bag waste will be collected fortnightly and households will be limited to one 180-litre bin.

The new contract will run for eight years and Councillor Rob Nolan, Cabinet member for environment and public protection, said there would be a two-year rollout for the new service.

However while the contract process moved forward there were questions about why the council is not taking the service back in house.
Labour councillor Jayne Kirkham said she thought there would be benefits to the council if it operated the service itself or used one of its companies to do so.

She said: “I was a bit unhappy to note that one of the recommendations is to go ahead with the contract but if that fails there are contingency options, one of which is to consider the business case for the council to run the service through its own company.

“We are already buying the vehicles and containers for this contract so I was a bit confused as to why we are not considering taking this contract in house or doing it through one of our own companies.

“If we already have the equipment we could surely TUPE (transfer) in the staff, take on their existing terms and conditions and pensions?

“There is a state of value requirement in the contract in that 89 jobs would be created. I would say that those 89 jobs would be at quite low terms and conditions and we could do a lot better than that.”

Cllr Kirkham highlighted that an inquiry into the future waste contract had looked at in-house provision “but it was discounted because of the pension costs and the belief that this was against the current direction of travel for Cornwall Council”.

However she said that this was stated two years ago and that the situation may have changed since then.

She said there would be “real advantages” and there would be “tangible benefits” to taking the service in-house, raising in particular the ability to be more flexible and able to make changes to the contract if required.

And Cllr Kirkham said there would be social benefits which would not only help the staff carrying out the work but Cornwall as a whole.

Cllr Nolan said the idea of running the service in-house had been considered by an overview and scrutiny committee but it was considered too expensive and added that there were “all manner of issues”.

He said that Corserv – an umbrella company owned by the council – had expressed an interest in the service but said it had not bid for the contract.