Eight Year Deal with South London Waste Partnership Starts Today : Recycling to be Harmonised across 4 London Boroughs with £209m Veolia Contract

Following a £209 million contract with Veolia the South London Waste Partnership intends to harmonise waste collections for one million residents across south London.

Acting on behalf of the four boroughs it represents: Croydon, Kingston, Merton and Sutton, the partnership said that the 8 year contract with Veolia was awarded following a competitive dialogue procurement process.

The contract formally began on Saturday 1st April 2017 but from today (Monday 3rd April) Veolia starts delivering a new-look collection service to households in Sutton (as well as an ‘as-is’ collection service in Merton).

In addition to recycling and rubbish collections, the contract with Veolia also covers street cleansing, commercial waste, recyclate material sales, winter gritting and vehicle management.

330 staff have ‘TUPE’ transferred over to Veolia’s employment from Merton and Sutton councils, who previously operated these services in-house. Under the deal Veolia is the incumbent provider of a range of environmental services in Croydon and Kingston, who will join the contract in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

The company explained that the roll-out of the new services will be phased over a two-year period, with Sutton the first borough to go live with the new ‘twin-stream’ recycling collection service from today.

This will see the introduction of a new separate weekly food waste collection. Recycling will be collected on an alternate weekly basis (paper and card one week; plastics, glass, cans and cartons the next) and rubbish will be collected every two weeks. Veolia will also be tasked with growing the subscription-based garden waste collection service.

The new recycling and rubbish collection service will be introduced in Merton and Croydon in October 2018 and Kingston in April 2019.

In a second ‘Lot’ to the Environmental Services contract, the South London Waste Partnership has appointed idverde as the provider of parks, grounds and cemeteries maintenance services across the two boroughs of Merton and Sutton.

This contract, worth £26 million, started in February 2017, and has seen the TUPE transfer of 89 staff over to idverde.

Councillor Phil Doyle, Chair of the South London Waste Partnership Joint Committee commented: “These new contracts will deliver high quality services and save tens of millions of pounds - well in excess of the £30 million savings target that was set. Working together, the four boroughs have negotiated excellent deals with two commercial partners who bring huge experience and expertise to the table.

“When we started out on this procurement in 2015, there were some who doubted we would ever get to this point. Recycling and rubbish collection in particular is such a sensitive and difficult service to be re-designing. Doing this across four London boroughs, with three different political parties in power, was seen by some as too difficult.

“But the four boroughs of the South London Waste Partnership have once again worked together in an effective and business-like manner. This sort of cross-party, cross-boundary working is going to have to become the norm if we are to achieve the more harmonised approach to waste collections that regional and national government are advocating. The South London Waste Partnership has shown that it can be done.”

Estelle Brachlianoff, Senior Executive Vice President, Veolia UK and Ireland said: “Through the Partnership, we have the opportunity to harmonise services across the four London boroughs to deliver significant cost savings and high quality, reliable services that will boost sustainability and preserve resources.”

Nick Temple-Heald, Chief Executive Officer, idverde UK added: “With Veolia and idverde, the specialists in their respective fields, now delivering services across all four boroughs this procurement really has resulted in the best of both worlds for the residents of south London.”

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