Efforts to modernise the council’s Cityclean rubbish and recycling service have been under way for more than seven years without apparently reaching the streets, councillors said.
They criticised the time being taken by Brighton and Hove City Council to switch from old-fashioned paper-shuffling to a 21st-century digital set up. An earlier council report gave a timeline from 2020-22.
Green councillor Pete West, who chairs the council’s Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee, said that the modernisation work had taken eight years and counting.
Referring to an audit report, Councillor West said: “There is a long list here about concerns in relation to this.
“It feels to me the question is does Cityclean have sufficient project management strength to be able to deliver this novel programme. That’s what’s jumping off the page at me. I will need to be convinced.
“Cityclean has struggled with a whole number of things and I appreciate this is not going to be easy to achieve.”
Conservative councillor Anne Meadows said that residents in her ward, Patcham and Hollingbury, were complaining about rubbish not being collected, particularly garden waste because the council charged a fee for that service.
Councillor Meadows said that residents did not understand the Digital Cityclean project to bring in suitable IT systems.
She said: “You’re moving everything that was on paper to digital but I can’t understand why that has such an impact on the service itself.
“I wondered what the timescale for completion was for this digital thing because it feels like it’s an unnecessary upset for residents in some ways.”
The modernisation project goes back to at least the start of 2018 and, after some scoping work, the Digital Cityclean project got under way in 2020.
A report to councillors said: “The City Environment Improvement Programme has been delivering improvements to the Cityclean service since 2018 in the context of reducing council budgets and increasing customer demand.
“The programme has a total of 17 projects, including a Digital Cityclean project to implement new integrated waste management software.
“The Digital Cityclean project is a programme of five phases / projects to digitise data and automate processes within Cityclean services.”
These include digitising customer invoices and payments, providing real-time information to residents, using route planning software and bringing in mobile technology for street-cleansing teams.
The five phases relate to trade waste, garden waste, bulky collections, domestic collections and street cleaning.
The report said: “The first of five phases of the Digital Cityclean project – moving from a paper-based system to automated processes for trade waste customers – has been completed.
“In reviewing the current arrangements, we found that there were several areas where we could advise further improvements that could be helpful in controlling and ensuring delivery of the remainder of the project.”
These included ensuring that the right people were available when needed and improving the ability of council managers “to track progress and meet key timelines”.
The auditors also said that the project team should resume regular performance and progress updates to councillors to provide transparency and accountability.
But none of the project team leaders were present when the council’s Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee met at Hove Town Hall on Tuesday (22 April).
As a result, a number of questions from councillors could not be answered but members were told that the Cityclean management would be expected to attend the committee’s next meeting in June.
Sacking and rehiring all the managers from top to bottom would probably help city clean function properly. People have been wasting away for 20+ years in the same roles, change is alien to them.
It’s taking longer than the disciplinary action Bella Sankey promised to stop the bullying, racism and sexism at Cityclean.
Maybe the digital system’s delay is due to bullying, racism etc
Important points Jon.
I was gobsmacked this week when Bella Sankey said “sadly we discovered on taking office that the service had some deep-rooted issues that had existed for many years, even decade” where on earth had she been before then. Literally EVERYONE in the city has known there have been huge problems with the bins for as long as we can remember. Her faux surprise isn’t fooling anyone!
Labour should have sorted all this out back in 2019 when they had a chance, if Labour councillors had backed up council staff rather than supporting their GMB rep mates maybe things would have improved by now.
Issues always been the same senior management incompetence they blamed workers they blamed GMB union and reps since 23 there’s been no intervention from any of the above now. Its worse than ever put senior management in place that can actually do the job not lazy fraudulent people they had in the past
Cllr West in charge of Audit Standards?
Perhaps he can collate figures on how much taxpayer money the Greens spaffed away
My very first thought!
The last thing Cityclean needs is more management! Really simple: get one efficient manager to run the service and one effective one to implement the digital move whilst liaising with the workforce and unions.
Shut it down. It’s fundamentally broken and has been for decades.
Cityclean is top heavy with useless managers that are just there for the paycheck and bully the staff down. And with things taking since 2018 that’s about as long as it takes them to decide they may need to replace the old outdated trucks that break down all the time
There are at least three options including:
1. Close the current Direct Labour Organisation (DLO). Make all staff redundant. Put the service out to tender and start again.
2. Put the current service with TUPE out to tender. Tried twice but both handed back the keys.
3. Keep the DLO. Move to an entirely communal waste bin model, requiring Driver Only Operation of collecting vehicles, as is done in parts of Europe. Make redundant those staff no longer required.
Councils are generally required to use a competitive tendering process for projects exceeding £5 million. This ensures fair competition and value for money for taxpayers.
That’s why the last 2 fleet managers only purchased 3 trucks at a time then lol those free holidays don’t pay for themselves.
(For those that don’t know, the last 2 fleet managers got kickbacks from vehicle firms as well as free holidays and managed to get away with it).
Why do we need Fleet Managers? Surely the fleet should be leased and maintained by the company that makes or distributes the vehicles. The contract should just stipulate that they supply as many vehicles as required per day, in fully working order.
Why do we need Fleet managers you ask. Fleet managers do vital roles ensuring that vehicles are available in a fit condition, arrange maintenance, repairs, MOT’s, tax and insurance, fueling and other legal requirements.
Vehicle builders do not offer after care services, they just build the vehicle.
Dealers where leased vehicles are concerned, will usually contract the company using the vehicle for it’s maintenance needs.
When deciding what options are available, you have to work out vehicle cost of purchase against the price for leasing, and go for the cheapest.
I don’t get your point about daily supply, the council will have a fleet of vehicles say 10 vehicles with some spare vehicles to cover those due for maintenance anyway.
Just spend money on some decent diesel dustcarts. The electric ones are crap, about 4 times the price, have less capacity and keep breaking down!
There’s a wealth of knowledge driving these trucks as well as loading them perhaps if the managers spoke to them instead of at them they might get somewhere but as long as they adopt the attitude of managers know best we will get nowhere