Rother District Council has joined forces with Hastings and Wealden Councils in appointing a new contractor, Biffa, to provide waste collection and street cleansing services. A new waste, recycling, street and beach cleaning contract will start in Hastings, Rother and Wealden from the end of June this year.
Biffa has been appointed to provide waste and recycling collection services to all households in these areas and to provide street cleaning in the Rother and Wealden areas.
Hastings will be providing its own street cleaning in-house and all of the new arrangements will start on June 29.
The appointment of Biffa follows a robust procurement project conducted by Hastings, Rother and Wealden councils over the last year following a mutually agreed early exit from the current contract with Kier Environmental Services.
Councillor Tony Ganly, Chair of the Joint Waste and Recycling Committee, said: “Collecting household waste and recycling and keeping our streets clean are essential public services and all the councils are delighted that Biffa will be our contracting partner.
“As a specialist waste management company with a long history, Biffa’s company knowledge and experience provides us with confidence they will deliver our residents with an excellent quality of service.”
Simon Baddeley, Biffa Municipal’s Development Director, said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded the contract for waste collection, recycling and street cleansing by the Joint Waste Partnership. We’ll be ensuring our brand new fleet will support a seamless handover from the current waste collection provider while continuing to deliver cost-effective services.
“We are also excited to be able to use our technology to provide not only a better service for members of the public, but also a safer one for drivers and residents. With the addition of 360-degree cameras to all of our frontline vehicles we will not only keep them safer, but also inspect streets more efficiently while operating the new street cleansing service.”
Under the current contract with Kier Environmental Services, which started in 2013, the nature of the waste and recycling environment has changed enormously.
The councils will work in partnership with the new contractor, Biffa to meet the service requirements expected by residents, employing a flexible approach to meet the challenges of the changing waste environment and legislation.
Waste and recycling collections and street and beach cleaning services are an essential public service provision. Whilst local authorities are still facing significant financial challenges, the appointment of Biffa on a seven year contract is welcomed by the councils.
Notes to editors:
• Biffa is a leading UK-based integrated waste management business. The Group operates across the breadth of the waste management value chain, including the collection, treatment, processing and disposal of waste and recyclable materials, as well as related work in the production and sale of energy derived from waste and the sale of recovered commodities such as paper, glass, metals and plastic.
• Biffa’s customer base for these services includes local authorities (which includes the collection of waste from households), large corporates and SMEs, and purchasers of end-product commodities and energy. Across its operations, the Group managed approximately 3.3mT of waste in Fiscal Year 2017.
• The Group’s services are organised across four operating divisions: Industrial & Commercial; Municipal; Resource Recovery & Treatment (RR&T); and Energy. In Fiscal Year 2017, the Group’s total revenue was £990.4 million and its Underlying EBITDA was £137.7 million.
• Biffa was successfully admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange’s main market for listed securities in October 2016 under the ticker “BIFF”.
• Frontline staff working on the current contract will be protected under TUPE regulations which will see them transferred to the new contract.
• The government has recently (December 2018) published the UK Resources and Waste Strategy and will probably implement some new waste management principles through new legislation in due course. The new collection system will give more flexibility by allowing the mix of recycling material to be adjusted without needing new containers and vehicles.
Image Credits: ESCC .
Let’s hope Biffa is more efficient at recycling. I have been disappointed recently to see that the lorry used for collecting the recycling doesn’t have a separate compartment for glass. Therefore, all bottles and jars etc carefully put in a box rather than the green bin by conscientious residents is all put in with the general recycling. One would like to hope that it is sorted properly at the depot but i suspect not.