Councillors stall new bin refuse investment

Councillors stall new bin refuse investment

28 June 2017

A MULTI-MILLION pound plan to transform bin collections across Newry, Mourne and Down District has been stalled by councillors.

Senior council officials favour a major £3m spending spree on 14 new bin lorries as the best way of  transforming creaking refuse collection services that have suffered continual problems since the amalgamation of Down and Newry and Mourne Councils.

However, councillors have blocked the proposal which is the officials’ favoured option out of three put forward to politicians at a meeting in Newry on Wednesday.

Instead they want an independent appraisal of all the options before they decide on the ideal way forward for the service.

When the councils were merged, along with the Ballyward area of the former Banbridge Council, it meant three different refuse collection services were operating under the same local authority.

For example, take the collection of glass. In the former Down District glass is taken to bottle banks; in Newry and Mourne it is mixed in with the blue bin recyclable refuse; and in Ballyward it is put is put into separate containers and collected by refuse collectors. This means the blue bin collection in Newry and Mourne costs around £275,000 extra to process because the glass has to be separated out.

Another problem involves the working patterns of refuse collectors. In the former Down District refuse collectors work specific hours whereas in Newry and Mourne they go home once they have completed their run.

As well as standardising the refuse collection service, a major headache for senior council managers is the need to meet the UK target recycling figure of 50% — Newry, Mourne and Down is currently well below that level.

In a bid to improve recycling the council recently introduced waste food collection in brown bins, but this has been bedevilled by a major shortage of brown bins and by the ageing fleet of bin lorries constantly breaking down.

The council will have to tender for a new contract for blue bin material starting next April and so needs to decide on a standardised system for glass collection across the district.

In a bid to advance this, a paper containing three options was presented to last week’s Regulatory and Technical Services Committee.

The headline option is the purchase of 14 new bins lorries, at a cost of £2.9m, which council officials believe could be paid for by using part of the council’s £8m reserve fund.

The new bins would have a collection pod behind the crew cab into which glass would be poured from special trays that slot in to the top of blue bins, keeping glass and other recyclables separate. The rear of the new bin lorries would be used for other blue, black and brown refuse as normal.

The council’s senior management team strongly favours this option, because it would solve at a stroke the problems caused by operating such an ageing fleet of vehicles.

The other two options are six small dedicated glass collection vehicles at a cost of £750,000, that would require an additional 12 workers, and the use of bottle banks across the district that would cost £150,000.

Council director, Canice O’Rourke, who is retiring at the end of June, said bottle banks would be seen as withdrawing a service in Newry and Mourne and would be unpopular.

Mr O’Rourke said the option for 14 new lorries would “very significantly reduce our breakdowns and we would maybe be eligible for grant money for the capital costs.” He explained under this system the glass would be collected once a month.

“If we were to raise the £3m from the rates it would increase by around five per cent but the alternative would be to take the money from reserves which are £8m,” he said.

Mr O’Rourke said if the collection system can be resolved the intention would be to have brown and blue bins would be lifted fortnightly while, controversially, the black bins would either be lifted every three weeks or smaller bins would be given to householders.