Agenda item

To consider the Fly-tipping and Fly-posting Enforcement Pilot Cabinet Report scheduled for Cabinet consideration on 26 May 2021 as an urgent item with the agreement of the Chairman.

The O&S Board is asked to scrutinise the reports and make recommendations to Cabinet as appropriate.

Cabinet members invited to attend for this item: Councillor May Haines, Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Councillor Mark Anderson, Portfolio Holder for Environment, Cleansing and Waste.

The Cabinet report for this item is included with the supplementary agenda for consideration by the Overview and Scrutiny Board.

The Chairman introduced the item and explained that he was varying the order of the agenda to take this item next. The Chairman explained that this was being considered as an item of urgent business because the report was due to be considered at the Cabinet meeting on 26 May and it was therefore not possible to delay scrutiny of this issue for a future meeting of the Board and because members of the Board had expressed a particular interest in scrutinising this issue. The Portfolio Holder for Community Safety presented the report, a copy of which had been circulated to each Member and a copy of which appears as Appendix 'B' to these Minutes in the Minute Book. The Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and the Portfolio Holder for Transport, Cleansing and Waste outlined the key issues within the report and responded to points raised by the Board including:

Cllr D Kelsey left the meeting at 7:10pm.

·       That the pilot did not remove any of the cost of removing fly-tipping. The service was to cover investigations and potentially reduce instances of fly-tipping and there would be an opportunity to recover some of the cost if investigations were successful.

·       Whether other options to address fly-tipping had been considered. Other areas had removed the services charges for visiting the tip at certain times, whether there could be provision for household collections for some waste or other options to reduce fly-tipping which do not involve enforcement.

·       That an In-House Service was looked at but this would require additional staff within regulatory services. Whereas an external provider could focus on fly-tipping and were specialists in the service.

·       There wasn’t currently a deterrent for householders not to fly-tip, although there had been lots of encouragement for people on how to address things correctly.

·       There was also a need to push the message out on how to manage waste responsibly.

There were a number of requests to address issues outlined within the non-public appendix the Board therefore:

RESOLVED that under Section 100 (A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraph 3in Part I of Schedule 12A of the Act and that the public interest in withholding the information outweighs such interest in disclosing the information.

Cllr M Cox and Cllr L Dedman returned at 7:27pm

The meeting moved into non-public session.

During the consideration of exempt information questions were raised regarding what due diligence had been undertaken on the preferred provider, on the reputation of the provider and the process of selection, the contractual requirements, including the right to terminate the contract with 30 days-notice, risk of reputational damage

The meeting resumed in public session

Following the debate, it was proposed and seconded and subsequently resolved that Cabinet be:

RECOMMENDED to reconsider the decision, not proceed with the contract at this time and go back and look at what other options are available.

Voting: 9 for, 0 against, 3 abstentions