Telford & Wrekin Council seek new waste service contractor
Telford & Wrekin Council will next week be asked to back plans for a new waste service contract which will see a new a waste transfer station built in the borough.
The new contractor would be asked as a minimum to keep all of the current services, including the collection of the range of recyclables and green waste collected from the kerbside, while the Council would explore with bidders ways to improve collections, particularly for recycling.
The contract would replace the current waste contracts for household waste and compostable waste that will expire in 2014 and 2019 respectively. The Council’s cabinet is being asked to back the procurement process which would begin later this summer.
The successful bidder, likely to be awarded the contract next year.
Councils by 2014/15 will see tax on waste sent to landfill rise to £80/tonne by 2014, up by 71% on land fill tax levels in 2010/11.
The successful contractor will be asked to make their own arrangements to build a transfer station. In 2010, the Council had budgeted and planned to build this itself.
The new contract will cover all the borough’s waste services and replace the current three separate contracts for these services and the new contractor would run the waste transfer station and Community Recycling Centres.
Cllr Shaun Davies, cabinet member for environment, co-operative council and partnerships said: “We have an excellent opportunity to change how we collect waste and with the public’s support push recycling up even further.
Since 2004 recycling of household waste has trebled from 14% to 44% and new contract will provide the opportunity to increase this further.
“Increasing recycling is also a financial necessity. At time when we must find £40 million of savings by 2014, principally due to Government grant cuts, we simply cannot afford to continue to send the waste we currently do to landfill.
“Key to this new contract will be building a waste transfer station in a much more cost effective way than the Council had previously proposed. We look forward to the proposals that the market comes forward with for this.”
The report will be considered by the Cabinet at its meeting on May 31.
