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Posts tagged recycling
South Hams Recycling Update
8 July 2021
Following a period of intense activity by South Hams District Council and the introduction of some temporary service changes, the number of collections being missed by the Council’s waste and recycling contractors FCC Environmental has dramatically reduced.
In the last few months, many residents in South Hams have experienced significant disruption to their recycling service, as the contractors tried to roll-out a new kerbside recycling service.
At the peak of the disruption in mid-May, the Council was receiving about 255 reports of collections been missed every day.
The good news is that by the end of last week, that number had dropped to about 64 missed collection reports per day. At the same time, the number of people phoning the contact centre had also reduced by approximately 36%.
Cllr Keith Baldry Executive Member for Recycling and Waste said: “Whilst it is clear from these statistics that there has been an improvement in performance, I think that there are still an unacceptable number of collections being missed.
“Our focus in the last few weeks has been to get everybody a collection on the day that they are meant to have a collection, although it was not the recycling service that we had promised.
“I am pleased the situation has improved but there is still more work to be done.
“The Executive has been very robust with FCC throughout this disruption. They have now requested that FCC continue to deliver more significant and sustained improvements to reduce the number of missed collections further before we consider reinstating the full Devon Aligned kerbside collection service to all residents.”
South Hams District Council will continue to monitor the daily performance of the service. The Executive continue to express to FCC that they must focus on the complex and repeat missed collection issues, as well as key priorities such as those households who need assisted collections.
FCC have committed to producing the next steps of their action plan on July 12th.
This will detail a plan for the systematic review of the existing rounds and a detailed plan to roll-out the Devon Aligned Kerbside Recycling Collection Service to all of the residents in the District.
These plans and any progress on them will be reviewed by Officers and the Lead Member and reported back to Council as soon as possible.
– ENDS
FCC Environment issues a service update and apologises to the residents of South Hams
Please find below a service update on the current situation with South Hams’ waste and recycling service from FCC Environment.
On 1st April 2019, FCC Environment began providing all waste, recycling collection and street and toilet cleaning services on behalf of South Hams District Council extending the company’s existing contract with West Devon Borough Council to deliver a range of benefits to residents in both communities.
The waste and recycling service in West Devon, which mirrors the system rolled out in South Hams, has been successfully operating for over 10 years and residents have responded well. The new recycling vehicles now in use in South Hams have been in use in West Devon since March 2018.
The new recycling system which is currently being introduced in South Hams is considered ‘best in class’ by many other local authorities in England, has been carefully designed to maximise the amount of materials collected for recycling. The system also delivers improved quality recyclate which means the materials will go on to be recycled into new products.
Behind the scenes this system has been far from easy to implement in South Hams and FCC acknowledge that there have been service issues for some residents for which we apologise. These teething problems have resulted in some residents experiencing missed collections and we are truly sorry for any inconvenience and difficulties this has caused and continues to cause as we work with the council to rectify.
It should also be noted that the system was designed on the basis of recycling vehicles filling up once a day and being emptied at the end of the working day but due to the home working implications of lock downs through 2020-21 and residents saving recycling for the new system to launch, the vehicles can fill up, up to 2 to 3 times a day, so they need to travel back to the depot and unload each time but we are making our way through the implications of such increased volumes.
We are working hard to collect from residents that have been missed and to collect from the harder to reach properties on our rounds and we are getting there but we would ask residents, particularly those who have had repeated missed collections, to bear with us at this time.
We have been questioned about the vehicles being too large for some areas; the vehicles selected to deliver this service are state of the art recycling vehicles and they are sized to maximise the collection of recycling across the District. We do ask residents to follow council advice to place their recycling bins and boxes in the right places for collection. We appreciate for some that this may mean changes to the way their recycling has been collected previously but we ask for your support on this.
We are asking residents to bear with us in the coming weeks while these multi-faceted issues with this complex recycling scheme are ironed out and we remain confident that, once these hurdles have been overcome, that the service we have been contracted to deliver across South Hams and West Devon will deliver all of the benefits promised at the outset.
– FCC Environment
Issued 28 May 2021
Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRC)
A message from DCC:-
Following last night’s announcement about the National Lockdown, DCC would like to confirm that the HWRC’s will remain open however the resale shops will be closed.
The winter opening hours are:
Monday to Friday 9:00am to 4:30pm
Saturday and Sunday 10:00am to 4:30pm.
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