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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Enterprise dumped for Veolia by Haringey Council

A frisson of excitement (or is it trepidation?) at the Community Volunteer news desk as we learn that council waste contractors, Enterprise, are to be replaced by Veolia beginning in mid-April.

The company was chosen from a final shortlist of two at a meeting of the council’s cabinet on Tuesday, January 25 and the contract between Haringey council and Veolia, who will deliver recycling, refuse, and street cleansing services for the next 14 years, is now being finalised. 

 

 

Tags for Forum Posts: Enterprise, recycling, refuse collection, street cleaning, veolia, waste contractors

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Permalink Reply by Omotn on February 5, 2011 at 8:03
Sorry, don't know. That's a detail. It's probably also commercially confidential. Even if performance is so poor as to justify cancellation there would be a Veolia clause insisting that the remaining years be paid for anyway.
Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on February 5, 2011 at 11:11
You could put your questions directly: to Niall Bolger Director of Urban Environment: or Nilgun Canver "cabinet" councillor with the remit for the waste contract.  Or via your three ward councillors.
Permalink Reply by Omotn on February 8, 2011 at 7:56

I do not find the excitement surprising. Obviously not I suppose as I seem to be excited, for the following reasons:

  • Refuse collection is an emotive subject - especially if it is done infrequently. The snow and Christmas caused a few missed collections but extensive coverage and many pictures in the papers. Two badly parked cars on an estate in South London meant missed collections for a few weeks and got about five minutes on the BBC news. Pickles is forever going on about weekly and fortnightly. There is comment in this thread about how mid morning is abad collection time, for myself I don't like being woken at 6:30!
  • Over 6,800 responses were received to the recent consultation  more than for any other.
  • Recycling has become almost a religion - I separate out everything that might be recyclable for the boxes - I'd really like to believe that the contents of the boxes actually do get used again and go neither to landfill nor to some limbo wasteland awaiting for the market to pick up. (Given that cycle is a sequence of events that has no beginning and no end but simply repeats itself why do we need the emphatic 're' prefix?)
  • Street cleaning too arouses emotions. It cost the country millions each year, yet by the simple expedient of putting litter in bins we could remove the need for most of this expense.
  • Plus this has all the hallmarks of a classic cock up. Read the agenda item or the minutes or my email to   Cllr Canver  to see what an apparent mess they are making of this.
  • Before the contract details are complete Haringey has given up its main negotiating lever (awarding the contract elsewhere ) by agreeing to employ Veolia, a hard nosed highly profitable company about 30 times bigger than Haringey by turnover with, no doubt , a negotiating team to match. Veolia will run rings round Haringey.
  • Niall Bolger seems to know how to conduct himself at a public sector interview (apparently he has a new better job elsewhere), where real world considerations vanish and predetermined, politically correct, box ticking takes over, but has not managed his team of officers  to get the relevant papers out in time for the cabinet meeting where the contract was awarded, despite being well aware of the impending deadline. 
  • To make matters worse the cabinet seems happy to proceed on this ill informed basis.
  • All of this taking place against a background where not one detail is yet available for public scrutiny, and indeed may never be on the basis of commercial confidentiality, or possibly under human rights law - apparently Veolia is a human and therefore has an entitlement to peaceful enjoyment of possessions

 

Permalink Reply by Admiral on February 8, 2011 at 15:15
Evidently there are strong practical (i.e. this looks like a bad deal), as well as ethical, considerations to oppose the Veolia contract. For anyone able to make it there is a protest being held tomorrow at 2 outside Camden Town Hall, Judd Street, London WC1H 9JE (near King's Cross). The North London Waste Authority (on which Cllr. Canver represents Haringey) will be meeting there in camera to discuss the contract bidding process.
Permalink Reply by Admiral on February 10, 2011 at 0:01
The North London Waste Authority today revealed that Veolia ES Aurora Ltd. will be the only company in the running for both the waste services and fuel use aspects of its £4 billion 30-year waste management contract. Four other bidders are shortlisted for each aspect and the Authority is scheduled to evaluate the bids on 5th April (http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listc...).
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on February 22, 2011 at 20:36

On the other hand, when I worked for the Inland Revenue Department of New Zealand we were a big purchaser of personal computers. Each year we would go out to tender and take the lowest bidder for our four year supply contract. Each year the winner of the contract would go bust trying to supply us computers so cheaply and we had to go back out to tender again.

Big jobs need big companies to do them. 30 year contracts are not for the kind of fly by nighters who wimped out of the tube upgrades etc. Will, there is even an argument for saying that this kind of thing should be done by the state. What do you think of that?

Permalink Reply by Omotn on February 22, 2011 at 23:18

I think of that, that the Inland Revenue Department of New Zealand carries out public procurement as ineptly as UK public bodies do. Clearly the contract should go to the best bid, not the cheapest. Sustainability is now a watchword, though not quite in this context. In the private sector Marks and Spencer once had a reputation for sending suppliers bankrupt not only by demanding low prices, but also by insisting on high quality.

I dare say the soon to be implemented bribery laws will also have unintended perverse consequences.

frank demsterPermalink Reply by frank demster on March 12, 2011 at 13:23
I'm led to believe there will be penalties for poor performance.  The Enterprise contract was always monitored in terms of performance, more so as it went on.
frank demsterPermalink Reply by frank demster on February 22, 2011 at 22:54

There will be penalties for poor performance I'm told.

There have been contract monitors for years, trouble is there were never penalties built into the old contract

Permalink Reply by John McMullan on March 21, 2011 at 14:55
This morning my rubbish man told me that the collections are going to every other week in three months time. Recycling one week and rubbish the next. Apparently the council want to get recycling rates up to 70% and will be using fines to do it. Hooray!
Permalink Reply by Abi on March 21, 2011 at 15:12

You're kidding - that  is absolutely disgraceful if it's true. Is this a borough wide development?

All that will do if so is confuse people and I daren't even think about how much rubbish is going to be piling up during 'recycling week'. I'm not bothered about the fines as I think anyone who doesn't recycle already deserves to be fined anyway, but every other week rubbish collections - are you serious?

Permalink Reply by Abi on March 21, 2011 at 15:53
Same here - I only put one or two bags out every fortnight but judging by the piles of rubbish I see on my way to work every day of the week I am in a very small minority. I am going to assume that the refuse collector was ill-informed until the council actually confirm this...

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