To consider any questions submitted by the public.  (The deadline for questions is 4.30 pm on the Wednesday before the meeting – please contact Democratic Services by e-mailing democraticservices@swale.gov.uk or call 01795 417330).

The Mayor advised that eleven questions had been received from the public, one of which was later withdrawn. None were present at the meeting but written responses to their questions would be provided, and are set out below:

Question 1 – Martin Collins, Friends of the Earth

Swale FoE recently collected a large number of signatures from the general public in a short time, to a petition urging action on a particular aspect of planning regulations:

The climate emergency makes imperative, that all buildings be as energy efficient as possible.

That buildings are being constructed now which will soon require to be retrofitted with solar panels and heat pumps, is nonsensical.

We are not convinced that local planning departments are bound by the inaction of the national government in this matter.

What plans does the Council have to take a lead and to impose modern, progressive planning regulations fit for the twenty-first century? Such an initiative would gain broad public support.

Response – Leader

Thank you very much for your question.

National planning guidelines are set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and Chapter 14 of the 2021 version sets out meeting the challenge of climate change and flooding. Paragraph 152 states that Local plans should take a proactive approach in mitigating and adapting to climate change; and policies should support appropriate measures to ensure the future resilience of communities and infrastructure to climate change impacts. This is what Swale will be following when drafting policies for its Local Plan.

As you may be aware, Swale Council signed a Joint letter to the Secretary of State regarding the 13 December Written Ministerial Statement which was organised by the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) to express concern about the limiting impact of the 13 December Written Ministerial Statement (WMS) on local authorities wishing to set standards for net zero new homes in their authorities. (Further details can be found atJoint letter to the Secretary of State regarding the 13 December Written Ministerial Statement - Town and Country Planning Association (tcpa.org.uk))

Community Rights Action submitted a judicial review of December Written Ministerial Statement (herein referend to as WMS2023) in early 2023 and was heard in the High Court in June 2024. A summary of the grounds of challenge, and the result of the judgement is as follows:  

1. The Government failed on its duty under Section 19(1) of the Environment Act 2021 (“EA”) to have due regard to the Environmental Principles Policy Statement.

The Council are currently working through this judgement and assessing how it may affect the policies within our emerging Local Plan and how far beyond national targets/standards Swale can go.

The planning policy team have just commissioned a piece of evidence to feed into the Local Plan which will look at the following aspects of climate planning:

·         Climate change legislation

·         Carbon reduction, including:

o   Climate change mitigation

·         Climate change adaptation ( including expected climatic changes and impacts; and policy on how the built environment should adapt to it)

·         Local Plan Policy recommendations

The Council also declared a climate and ecological emergency on 26 June, 2019 to draw attention to the urgent need for effective action to reduce carbon emissions and the Council is taking ambitious steps to reach net-zero across the borough. For updates on progress please see Latest News - Climate Emergency Report (swale.gov.uk)

Question 2 – Rebecca Duffus

My bins have not been collected on time since the changes on 25th March. They were missed completely for over 3 weeks, and now only been done sporadically since.

I am aware of many roads who have not had collections at all for 6 weeks.

My question is: will tax payers be receiving compensation or a partial rebate of their council tax to reflect the failures in the services we are paying for?

Response – Leader

Whilst the Council acknowledges the disruption and the impact on our residents, Council tax does not work in that way.

Council tax legislation does not create a service contract between local authorities and residents. Instead, the law provides that council tax is a way of funding local authorities – and therefore there is no requirement to provide any service in return for payment. So a reduction in services, such as refuse collection, does not entitle you to a reduction in your council tax bill.

Council Tax is collected on behalf of Kent County Council, Kent Police, Kent Fire and Swale Borough Council. It is a tax that is payable for all services such as schools, the police, the fire service, adult social care, children services, parks, playgrounds and waste collections. The charge is payable for all services, whether they are used or not, for example not all residents have children at school.

The charge for waste collection is a small proportion of the total Council Tax charge and payments should be paid as per the residents’ Council Tax bill.

Question 3 – Mr Hawes

What steps are the council taking to effectively remedy the failure of the new bin collection service contract?

Response – Chair of Environment and Climate Change

• Regular daily meetings with Suez operational staff
• Regular meetings with Senior Suez Managers
• Recovery action plan
• Improving data
• Resident Communications
• Improved online forms
• Round changes

Question 4 – Mr Hawes

Why is there no response, using the council’s web page enquiry portal, to reported missed bins especially in light of failed waste bin collections to which there is no householder alternative.

Response – Chair of Environment and Climate Change

Given the volume of uncompleted whole roads, it was not possible to go back to collect individually missed bins in the early weeks, however the reports that residents have made in that time have helped immensely in highlighting the picture on the ground. This information has been used to inform catch ups and where rounds have been inefficient. 

The Council is aware that some of the online reporting forms have not worked as intended. They were created in advance using the data we had and by testing the integrations with Suez’s management system. They were set up for ‘business as usual’ rather than the initial disruption period, which in hindsight should have been better considered. 

We have since adapted the forms which provide an email confirmation to the resident and are clearer on what can be expected. We are still adapting these regularly and have welcomed the feedback received by residents.

Question 5 – Ian Russell

Why was the contract not re-tendered with terms that would attract other contractors as accepting a single bid was a very high-risk strategy? 

Response – Head of Environment and Climate Change

The tender for the waste and street cleansing was a detailed and lengthy process. It started with an expression of interest stage (with four companies participating) followed by a process called competitive dialogue where two companies took part throughout. We cannot release more detail of the process due to commercial sensitivity. Whilst we only received one final bid all Partners in the Mid Kent Waste Partnership were confident that bid could deliver to the required standard and remain of that view.

The question also infers that we should have adapted our preferred requirements in order to canvas more bids. The Council Partners had a number of red lines that we would not change, in the same way that companies who chose not to bid may have had red lines. To have done so may have reduced the standards in the long run or resulted in higher costs for Council Tax payers.

Question 6 – Ian Russell

Given that only one valid bid was submitted for the waste contract this must surely have signalled, to staff and members, that there were many aspects of the terms that were problematic. How and when was a review of this situation undertaken and reported?

Response – Chair of Environment and Climate Change

There are only a limited number of contractors that could deliver a contract of this size. There are many factors to influence why contractors may or may not choose to tender for contracts including what other opportunities were live at the same time as Mid Kent, proximity of their other contracts, the current performance or business strategy of the company.

As is always the case with tenders, a clear set of evaluation criteria is advertised to companies wishing to bid. They then understand how to construct their bids. Officers across all Partners evaluated the bid according to those criteria. Once that process had been completed, each individual Council took decision reports to their relevant committees according to their constitutions.

For Swale, a report on the tender was taken to the Environment committee and then further decisions were taken to the Policy and Resources committee. Alongside the recommendations, these reports set out the financial, legal and risk management implications for Members of those committees to debate and vote on.

Question 7 – withdrawn

Question 8 – Richard Godley

We are informed that the Contract gives a period of 3 months' grace for 'teething problems' to be addressed. I assume there is, however, a clause expressing the gross negligence or failure to deliver the service with reasonable care and skill. As such, how much longer must the public endure of failed collections, given collections are the purpose of the Contract before the Local Authority invokes such clauses and deems the Contract fundamentally breached.

Response – Chair of Environment and Climate Change

The contract does not reference ‘teething problems’. It puts all emphasis on the performance mechanism which is the document that dictates what constitutes a failure in a particular part of the service. It then identifies the timeframe for any failures to be rectified and what the penalty is should this not be met. The ‘grace period’ you refer to is mentioned in the contract as not applicable for the first three months of the service.

This period ended on 24^th June 2024 and we will be reviewing the performance mechanism at the end of each month from then on. The contract also has clauses around termination in the event of a breach, and I can confirm that we have not yet met those conditions.

Question 9 – Richard Godley

We are informed that staff of the contractor and the Local Authority have been subjected to verbal and physical abuse resulting from the acts and omissions of the contractor. While I deplore such acts, I must ask if the Local Authority accepts that by failing to deem the Contract fundamentally breached and either bringing the service in-house and/or re-tendering, they are putting the health and welfare of staff at risk through increasing frustration within the community in respect of what is such a vital service?

Response – Chair of Environment and Climate Change

We absolutely cannot accept or condone any act of physical or verbal abuse against our staff or that of our contractor at any time or circumstance. Whilst we understand the frustration of a disrupted service, there are mechanisms to formally raise your concerns with us. Many residents have taken this approach and had their collection issues resolved.

Terminating the contract would not have led to a change in the position any quicker. Mobilisation of an inhouse service would take many months if not years. Retendering a service again would take a similar amount of time and would be unlikely to have delivered the change needed without similar levels of disruption. Given the short-term response, any new contractor would likely charge a premium resulting in a higher cost to the taxpayer.  Therefore, it has been, and is right, to continue to work with Suez to address the remaining issues.

Question 10 – James Croucher

Swale Borough Council declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 but has directly funded the acquisition of a fleet of diesel refuse vehicles to facilitate the new contract with Suez. How does the Council justify this?

Response – Chair of Environment and Climate Change

This was a strong consideration and reducing the carbon footprint of the service was a key objective in the new contract. As part of the tender, we went out to industry to ask what measures could be taken. Electric refuse trucks are only used in limited locations at the moment and would not have been suitable for our rural Borough, nor would they have been financially achievable at the current time.

The new contract does bring lots of improvements that will help reduce our footprint. These include round reroutes which will reduce carbon by 10-15%, electric bins lifts which reduces the amount of diesel used by 5%. We are also encouraging a reuse scheme working with a local charity to reuse items discarded under the bulky waste collections.

Question 11 – Ricky Wilcox

What was the rationale behind the changes that Suez implemented from day one of the services?

Response – Chair of Environment and Climate Change

As with any service review, decisions are made based on evidence of previous performance and from officer and resident information. We conducted a resident survey ahead of the tender and this helped to inform what we kept the same and what we changed.

Routes and rounds hadn’t changed much for over 10 years. It meant that some rounds in the old contract were imbalanced, where new housing developments had come on board, and service rarely completed in the working week. The rationale for the changes was to move to a new system where the rounds of each day followed a ‘zonal pattern’ to allow for more vehicles to be in close proximity to each other on each day.

This aids the process of missed collections to be recovered in the most efficient pattern, with the distance from the depot reducing throughout the week to provide the best opportunity to complete and catch up where required. It also means it is easier to make changes over the course of the 8-year contract where new properties are built. The rounds themselves were based on an evidenced industry pass rate of 1000-1200 properties per standard lorry per day taking into account the makeup of the borough.

We also had other changes to consider such as the impact of the second tipping location being required for food waste.

The re-routing will also help us to deliver against our climate and ecological emergency targets, with the revised rounds scheduled to reduce the carbon footprint of the service by 10-15%.