Issue - meetings
Recommendations from the Executive Cabinet
Meeting: 27/02/2019 - Council (Item 84)
84 Recommendations from the Cabinet meeting held on 13th February 2019 and 27th February 2019 
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To consider the recommendations from the meeting of the Cabinet held on 13th February 2019.
Minutes:
Cabinet Recommendations 13th February 2019
Environmental Services Business Cases for Investment in the Domestic Waste Service, Commercial Waste Services and Place Team
Councillor M. Sherrey, Portfolio Holder for Health and Well Being and Environmental Services proposed the recommendations for the Environmental Services Business Cases for Investment in the Domestic Waste Service, Commercial Waste Service and Place Team. These were seconded by Councillor G. Denaro.
In proposing the recommendations Councillor Sherrey explained that officers had drawn up three business cases to outline current pressures on Environmental Services, as well as opportunities for additional income generation.
The business cases reflected each area within Environmental Services and briefly consisted of:
· Commercial Waste – it was explained that having expanded its services significantly over the last two years and generated considerable additional income for the Council, the Commercial Waste Team now required additional investment to support continued growth. This investment was expected to generate additional income that fully balanced out the additional investment from year one, supporting the sustainability of the wider service at best value to the Council’s residents.
· Domestic Waste – Having seen an increase in new housing across the District in the last few years, the current service has expanded within existing resources to support this, but has incurred unsustainable overspends as a result of high Agency costs due to a lack of resilience to cover annual leave and sickness. This lack of resilience eventually resulted in service failure during August/September 2018. In order to address this, the business case sets out the case for additional investment to secure the service without a reliance on Agency staff to cover standard services over the next few years, whilst a full service review is carried out. This would consider how best to deliver the service in a sustainable manner for the future, taking into account increased housing in the district and changes currently being considered by Central Government to what services the Council has to supply to residents, such as a free garden waste service and weekly dedicated food waste collections. Both of these would require significant investment to be provided in addition to the current services.
· Place Teams – the cleaning and grounds maintenance services are carried out by the Place Teams across the District and as with the Domestic Waste, there has been a significant increase in their workload as a result of increased housing and traffic on the roads, which generate more litter and fly tipping. This takes considerable resources to manage and has limited the Council’s ability to deliver the full benefits of Place working, resulting in a more reactive focus to some areas of work and lower standards.
Councillor Sherrey highlighted that the business cases and recommendation had been reviewed by the Overview and Scrutiny Board and Cabinet had approved all the recommendations as set out in the covering report and business cases attached to the agenda papers.
Following presentation of the report Members discussed a number of areas in more detail, including:
· Members were grateful that ... view the full minutes text for item 84