Partnership Closes in on ‘Preferred Bidder’ Status : Veolia in Pole Position for South London Waste & Recycling Contracts

The South London Waste Partnership has moved a step closer to selecting Veolia and The Landscape Group (TLG)as ‘Preferred Bidders’ for waste collection, street cleaning and parks maintenance services for the four councils it represents - Sutton, Merton, Croydon and Kingston councils.

The Partnership explained that Veolia is bidding to provide a harmonised waste collection, street cleaning and winter gritting service across the four boroughs. Landscaping and grounds maintenance firm, TLG, is seeking to win a contract for parks, cemeteries and grounds maintenance services in Merton and Sutton.

The two firms have emerged from the Partnership’s 18 month competitive tender procurement process as the two recommended ‘Preferred Bidders’ to deliver a range of environmental services on behalf of the four councils.

The eight year contracts are forecast to save the four boroughs more than the £30 million savings target that was set at the start of the procurement process.

Elected Members of the Partnership's Joint Waste Committee will meet on 7 June this year to review the outcome of the procurement process. They will be asked to endorse the Preferred Bidder recommendations before they are put before relevant committees on each of the four Partner boroughs. The borough committees will consider the recommendations at meetings during June and July, with the final one being Croydon Council’s Cabinet Committee on 11 July 2016.

“The four boroughs will spend a combined £38 million on delivering waste collection, street cleaning, winter gritting, parks and cemeteries maintenance services this year.,” explained Councillor Stuart Collins, Chair of the South London Waste Partnership Joint Committee.

“We identified that by working together and harmonising services across the region we could all make significant savings and deliver high quality services that local people value,” he continued.

The Partnership said that Preferred Bidder status would only be confirmed if all the relevant committees agree the recommendations. At that point the procurement process would enter a four-month ‘Fine Tuning’ stage, where finer details of the bidders’ proposed solutions are agreed.

According to the Partnership, flexibility and local sovereignty are key features of the new contracts.

The four boroughs all have the ability to specify different start dates for different elements of the new contracts. If contracts are awarded, the proposed timetable would see the new recycling and waste collection service roll-out across Sutton in April 2017, Croydon and Merton in October 2018 and Kingston in 2022.

These are indicative dates and are subject to individual borough decision-making bodies’ approval.

The four-borough waste and recycling collection service being proposed by Veolia would mirror the service they already operate in Kingston and Croydon, along with other London boroughs such as Bromley and Brent.

This would include a separate weekly collection of food waste, an alternate weekly collection of dry recycling (paper and card one week; tins, plastics and glass the next) and a fortnightly collection of residual (non-recyclable) waste.

The Partnership said that Introducing these changes would not only save money. They would also reduce waste production and increase recycling rates across the Partnership region, helping the four boroughs maintain their positions as some of the best recycling boroughs in London.

“When you look at the very substantial savings we can achieve - many tens of millions of pounds over the next eight years - set against the incredibly difficult decisions we are all having to make about which services to reduce or stop providing all together, I believe that most local people will agree that making these changes is the right thing to do. Local residents can rest assured that they will receive environmental services of the very highest quality, but at a greatly reduced cost to the public purse,” concluded Collins.

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