Thirteen bin lorries were out of action and agency staff proved “unreliable” over the summer, affecting Brighton and Hove rubbish and recycling collections, councillors were told.
The details emerged at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting yesterday (Tuesday 19 September) at Hove Town Hall where councillors quizzed managers from Cityclean, the council’s rubbish and recycling service.
The 13 bin lorries awaiting repair accounted for about a quarter of the fleet. With several vehicles more than seven years old, the council has started a 10-year modernisation programme to replace them, switching from diesel to electric.
Labour councillor Joy Robinson, who represents Central Hove, said that she had received repeated reports of missed communal rubbish and recycling collections in her area.
She accepted that missed collections were a problem not just in her ward but across Brighton and Hove because of “serious issues with the fleet”.
Councillors were told that a new vehicle had been ordered from a European supplier and was due next month, with three more due to be received at the Hollingdean depot by the end of the year.
Cityclean head of operations Melissa Francis told the council’s City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee that Brighton and Hove was the only council in the country using its particular communal bin system.
She said that it was not possible to borrow trucks from other councils – or use unadapted vehicles from Europe because they were configured for the opposite side of the road.
The new vehicles were ordered 18 months ago but their arrival had been delayed, she added.
Councillor Robinson said: “Does that mean the residents of Central Hove and the whole of the city have got to put up with the bad service that’s happened over the last couple of weeks?”
Ms Francis said that the council struggled with the communal refuse vehicles because they were old and prone to breaking down.
Crews had been asked to cover each other’s rounds when available but did not always do so.
Ms Francis said: “There are very restrictive working practises at Cityclean which means that, although that sounds straightforward, it is quite a challenge to be able to push through.”
Crews start their rounds early in the morning but Ms Francis added: “We have also recruited a PM (afternoon) driver and operatives so if there are vehicle issues and we have none spare to collect during the day, they will start work in the afternoon and collect in the evening.”
The new team will carry on communal bin collections once the morning teams have finished.
Citiclean are simply not fit for purpose. The people of Brighton and Hove are paying for a supplier that have been consistently unable to provide the service they are paid to provide. There is ALWAYS an excuse; staffing issues, broken lorries, roads too narrow, the moon is in Aquarius. Cancel the contract and give it to some who can actually collect the bins. It’s BINS for goodness sake! It’s not rocket science!!
Lissa, very interesting comments.
Council can’t remove the contract because they run it themselves, it was taken back in house sometime ago because the previous contractor was useless.
Interesting: “Brighton and Hove was the only council in the country using its particular communal bin system”. Why is this, and what are the advantages / disadvantages?
Unfortunately if I recall correctly the previous Labour Council tied the city into a very long contract with Cityclean
Surely, there are ways to monitor the contract, and if they’ve breached conditions, then to terminate the contract?
So my understanding is that currently, the processes of identifying things like missed collections are paperbased, which as you imagine, means that it is not effective and things are missed.
However, that also is a pretty clear solution to move forward. Use a computer solution, and create process for identifying missing collections, missing bins, damaged units.
Labour may have been the controlling party of councillors, but the council itself is made up of civil servants that advise, scrutinise contracts, point out deficient contract terms, confirm remediations for breaches, calculate value for money, etc.
BHCC tied the city into a very long contract.
It’s an in-house service.
That’s what I understood too. It was the council itself that eventually settled the last pay dispute with the binmen, which concerned rubbish collection,. Recycling is all to do with the long-term Veolia contract. Two different things.
Perhaps Cllr Lyons might do some homework on the subject?
Nope Cityclean is the councils own service.
I think you mean Viola who have a ridiculously long contract.
Seriously ?
As a Cllr I’m surprised you don’t know City clean is run and operated by, BHCC. ?
Although we’ve had missed collections, on the whole it’s been quite good. We have a single lane road, and sometimes collections have been dependent on size of the truck, and what seems like experience of the drivers, plus I think also health and safety, about not reversing. However, the majority of problems with collections seem to be because of inconsiderate parking, plus people that have been given resident parking permits which exceed the space, a situation with an unsafe wall etc.
Huge thanks to the teams that do collect in our road. They have a thankless job, which some of us do appreciate. Through Covid they were here week after week, whilst others stayed at home.
Well said,
I’m sure everything will be ticketyboo when the new electric bin lorries hit the streets!
At least, for all residents not living up hills.
Could cllr Davis remind us how much the lorries cost ?
At one time the City of Edinburgh used the same kind of large street bins for computerised semi-automatic side-loading; so it sounds like our paid staff are keeping to their decades of inexcusable ‘Mushroom farm’ tactics – playing on the gentle innocence of our Elected Members, rather than employing the professional knowledge, paid for by us taxpayers, to speak the full truth about a contentious situation; however embarrassing to those Town Hall officers the full truth might be!
Until sufficient details of a problem are brought to the Committee then our Councillors/Representatives are unable to propose appropriate solutions. Albeit our Cllrs very rarely seem to accept that they’ve been drawn into a ‘Mushroom farm’ situation – when the logical reaction is to demand that a new report, with much more detail, be brought to the next meeting of the Cttee, surely?
It being important to recognise that a bin-lorry (aka RCV) is actually a machine with two main parts: the cargo body with a loading and a compaction set of mechanisms; and the truck chassis-cab to carry the RCV body.
So which of the RCVs were or are non-operational due to defects in the truck, or defects in the cargo body + mechanisms, or defects in the same vehicle to both main areas?
The bitter reality, however, and over many years, has shown that BHCC simply does not possess the managerial and technical competence to efficiently run a service depot for commercial vehicles!
Even under the circumstances that our RCVs are used relatively lightly, covering just a few thousand miles per year pootling around within our City’s boundaries – far below the capacity of the heavy-duty components of our RCV trucks, mostly built on Volvo components plus some Mercedes (known for being ‘The million-mile truck’!). With correct maintenance we should be getting some 20 years of reliable service from our expensive quality bin-lorries. Although with a mid-life major service, to mainly renew age-related parts, and to refresh the cab interiors and upholstery for our staff etc.
And whilst privatisation of public services generally costs/wastes about £30 from each £100 of taxpayers money, compared to in-house services, the time seems to be long overdue for Cllrs to demand that Town Hall officers urgently scope more effective ways of maintaining our Council’s expensive vehicles?
Apparently B&H Buses run a good workshop for their fleet; East Sx Fire & Rescue seem to have good arrangements for the fire engines, as probably SECAMB have for their large fleet of ambulances?
So perhaps we need to fence-off the Hollingdean workshop and stores, to get a major truck franchise to run it on a double-shift, both as a sub-depot for their customer’s trucks, as well as for servicing/repairing our Council vehicles?
And with regard to our 3 or 4 apparently rare semi-automatic loading RCVs on low-floor Mercedes chassis:
these were purchased from the subsidiary of an arms factory in Brescia, Italy!
Which begs the question: if it’s that machinery that’s proving to be fragile, rather than any lack of skilled maintenance on our part, why did our Councillors ever agree to purchase a product not already proven In the UK, or even from one of the main-stream European RCV builders?
And is it possible that we no longer employ any technicians at Hollingdean who’ve been to Brescia for at least a full four-day factory training course?
It could it be that we haven’t even purchased whatever special tools and equipment which the Brecia factory recommends for testing and servicing their fairly complex RCV equipment?
And as to immediate action? Those who remember when SITA handed their waste-collection back to us, and drove all their RCVs away to another contract in Liverpool, will hopefully,recall that Cityclean scrambled around and rented RCVs from specialist hirers of municipal vehicles?
So why not over the past months with not enough working bin-lorries to provide the waste-collection services our Council Tax pays for? Possibly some cynical ploy to reduce outgoings by not paying for the workers who’d be needed if we had a full fleet of serviceable RCVs?
Part of the answer to some of these questions emerges from the Appendix to the Cityclean progress report, which speaks of issues with ‘Procurement’ within Cityclean.
Sorry, but it’s against all the ‘Good Governance’ principles for an end-user section to be doing their own purchasing; and worse still when those self-same purchasers certify the resulting invoices for payment!
Ever since the start in 1997 various professionals have pointed-out over the years that BHCC has conspicuously failed to operate a centralised procurement and contract-management section, under a manager holding relevant professional qualifications, formally granted by a Chartered Institute!
Some years ago an anecdote emerged, to the effect that over some 300 members of council staff held authority to purchase stationery from a range of over 200 potential suppliers – which looks very much like a recipe for inefficiency, perhaps for anarchy, and possib for even worse? To the ultimate detriment of us taxpayers, most likely!
And can’t Cityclean be relied upon to correctly purchase everything they need or want? With tens of millions of pounds being spent annually across our Council a formal 4-step structure is needed.
1. The user section prepares a technical Requisition/Specification for what’s needed (where the detailing of that document needs contact with potential suppliers then, to protect the Council’s interests, those exploratory contacts must involve the participation of a Buyer from Central Procurement).
2. The finalised Requisition/Specification (generic, in principle) is then passed to Central Procurement to locate, and to order from, a ‘Best Overall Value’ supplier, in full accordance with all BHCC Corporate Policies.
3. Receipt of deliveries are checked against the order by a Goods Inward officer, independent of the User and Central Procurement, although technical advice about compliance can be sought from the User section.
4. Compliant Receipt is then notified to Central Accounting. To pass the relevant invoice for payment (after verification of its correctness), and additionally to confirm the spend is in accordance with budgets agreed for that User section.
So, with such an overall majority, can we hope that the Councillors forming the new Administration (+ possibly some Opposition Cllrs?) might really make work of getting our Council to operate sound and watertight administrative systems (as Alderwoman Mary Mears and her elected colleagues had started to do during her three years as Leader of our Council)?
That is outstanding, bravo! Best comment I’ve read all year.
Is it that or is it that none of the staff at city clean work their contracted hours and they rush their rounds because they want to go home? The council is paying a massive wage bill for hours not worked.
No, it’s more leaning towards organisational structure.
Doesn’t help that instead of replacing half the fleet, the greens wasted millions on a handful of untested electric bin trucks… another reason we all voted them out