The motion was moved by Councillor Holden and seconded by Councillor Dean.

Councillor Sargeant also spoke on the motion.

The Labour amendment as set out in agenda item 28 of Supplementary Agenda 4 was moved by Councillor Garrod and seconded by Councillor Macauley.

The Labour amendment was put to a vote and was carried – votes in favour: 32, votes against: 19, abstentions: 4.

The substantive motion (as amended) was then put to a vote and was carried – votes in favour: 32, votes against: 19, abstentions: 4.

RESOLVED:

This Council recognises that the government has cut council budgets by over 40% since 2010 and that millions of pounds have had to be saved by local councils up and down the country, of all political flavour.  The level of cuts required in Merton would have affected front line services and forced the council to reduce essential services for our residents.  Merton Council therefore took an innovative approach to making the savings required by working with three of our neighbouring boroughs, Labour Croydon, Liberal Democrat Sutton and Conservative Kingston, to agree a joint contract with Veolia to save an estimated £48m over the lifetime of the contract whilst still delivering a comprehensive service vice to residents.  As with any significant change of this type, there have been initial difficulties in bedding down the new system across four boroughs and some residents are frustrated where local streets, parks and town centres have overflowing bins, fly tipping, graffiti, un-swept streets and missed rubbish collections.  Nonetheless, our missed refuse collections are still very low at 0.1%.

The results of the most recent Residents’ Survey, which showed street cleaning and litter as residents' top concern, and by the 6 month performance review of the new Veolia contract considered by the Sustainable Communities scrutiny panel earlier this month, which included a number of worrying findings:

·         Bin collection target just missed for each of the last 4 months but stands at 0.1%;Street litter target initially missed but  independent inspections for litter on Merton's roads have now found that the management of litter since Veolia began the contract is improving and for the last two months has been better than the standards previously maintained;

·         Increased detritus in the first four months which has since improved and for recent months the performance is better than last year;

·         Green sacks left uncollected after the street sweeping which Veolia have agreed to address.  Two additional mobile response crews are now operational to deal with this workload and we are seeing improvements already and are continuing to monitor the situation;

·         Some Bins not being emptied frequently enough, which are being addressed by the two additional mobile response crews;

·         Failure to remove fly tips within 24 hours due to an increase in the number of recorded instances.  However due to the innovative nature of the contract which is based on outcomes and not inputs, Veolia is still required to pick up these fly tips and we will be continuing to press them on how they intend to address this issue;

·         Initial Backlog in clearing graffiti from public land while a new bespoke graffiti removal vehicle and team was being put in place, and has now been in place since August and the backlog is being cleared; and

·         The £410,000 cost of implementation of the new contract which was part funded by the government’s “Transformation Challenge” programme so the net cost to Merton was £293k, within the budget agreed by council, and which will achieve an estimated £2m in savings a year .

This Council believes that despite the government’s funding cuts and the resulting impact on council budgets, residents deserve cleaner streets, parks and town centres of which we can all be proud and that is why a more affordable joint borough contract makes sense in the financial circumstances. Therefore, in order to continue to clean up the borough, this Council calls on the Cabinet to:

a)    Continue weekly street cleaning of residential roads and ensure street sweepers follow after the refuse vehicle on the same day where this is required, bearing in mind the outcomes-based nature of the contract which specifies the level of cleanliness required, and which may require more than weekly sweeps in some streets;

b)    Continue to Protect the weekly bin collection and continue to review and refine plans to move to a wheeled bin service from October 2018, with food waste and recycling continuing to be collected on a weekly basis and landfill waste collected on alternate weeks in order to drive up recycling levels;

c)    Consider Increasing the use of mobile CCTV where appropriate and where resources can be identified to crack down on graffiti and fly tipping; and

d)    Regularly review  the four borough contract with Veolia, keeping all financially viable options open, and to demand action as part of the contract service level agreement with regard to performance failures experienced so far but without incurring further financial cost to the Council for doing so.