Rubbish!

Updated 25th July 2006

You can't help notice that Harrow Council rolled out its recycling scheme over the whole Borough starting on the 4th July. This has been years in the planning, with pilots running in some areas in 2005. After some teething problems the pilots worked okay, which is just as well as the Council is required to adopt this kind of policy by Central Government. If you don't like the idea of recycling, don't blame the previous administration; don't blame the incoming administration; blame Whitehall.

However, the Council's communications are still a shambles. Mistakes made during the implementation of the new collection rotas have left residents waiting weeks for missed collections to be corrected. There are bound to be initial problems with any new arrangements but when residents point out errors they have a right to expect action. From what we're hearing, the calls are being answered, recorded and completely ignored.

So what's the real story? Much is being made of a Council call centre in Coventry. If you've spoken to them, you won't be surprised to learn that they're answering questions from a script, and know nothing at all about Harrow. It turns out that the company contracted to manage the changeover set up a call centre to field questions in Harrow, but this was quickly overwhelmed and some of the calls are being diverted to Coventry.

Some sources suggest that this call centre costs £4000/day, however it appears to be provided by the contractor as part of the service and we hope they'll foot the bill for the problems.

The plans for the new scheme were devised  and contracts placed by the previous administration, contracting a lot of the work out to Capita. It's doubtful that the new administration could have had time to examine the plans and change them, even if they could anticipate the problems. They'd have been relying on the same advice as the previous council. Claims made in the name of one of Harrow's MPs that the new Council was the cause of the mess are incredible, and there is some doubt that the MP in question actually said what is being reported. If he did, he has must have been briefed very badly about the situation in his constituency.

There are also reports that some of the organic waste is being sent to land-fill. This is, unfortunately, true. The Council (the previous administration if you really want to blame someone) has a deal with West Waste to take 1500 tons of compost a week. So far they have been collecting 2000 tones from residents every week and the balance has to be disposed of somewhere. West Waste have refused to take it at short notice.

Some people are up in arms about collections being refused due to 'contamination' - e.g. plastic mixed in with the compost. Whilst this is annoying, and could probably have been handled more sensitively, knowing that West Waste charges the council £600 if it finds any in a bin does help explain the attitude. One might reasonably ask why this was built into the contract with West Waste, but it was agreed a long time ago and it looks like we're stuck with it for the time being.

So why does the Council bother? It has not choice. If we don't meet the GLA's recycling targets then Harrow doesn't get all its money for refuse collection. It's as simple as that. The Council - and that means this administration, this one, the last one and the next one is being forced into it.

Assuming you're happy with the idea of recycling to reduce landfill then stick with it; the council is simply suffering from implementation problems. Whether these start-up issues could have been avoided is debatable. Whether Capita's role in the business was to our benefit should be examined. HCTC is  keeping tabs on the whole situation to make sure our money isn't being wasted without repercussions.