Agenda item

(To receive a report from Matthew Michell, Lincolnshire County Council)

Consideration was given to a report which provided information in relation to the performance measures associated with the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership.  It was reported that at previous meetings the Partnership had discussed how best progress against strategic objectives could be measured. 

Two measures were agreed at the last meeting for the first topic of fulfilling the Waste Hierarchy (promoting recycling and waste minimisation respectively):

·         Recycling rate of "waste from households" (percentage) and

·         Household Waste Collection (kilograms per household)

The forecast for 2019/20 was that performance would be slightly better than the previous year, and it was hoped that the recycling target would improve.

In terms of waste minimisation, the message still needed to be promoted to reduce the amount of waste produced.

In terms of green waste, it was thought that the volumes collected would be an increase on the previous year.  It was noted that composting contributed 21% to the recycling total.

One message which really needed to be communicated to the public was how little of Lincolnshire's waste actually went to landfill, as a significant proportion of the population still believed that the majority of waste went to landfill.

In terms of contamination, it was important to know how much contamination there was, but it was also important to know what the contamination was, so this could influence the communications messages being put out to make them more targeted.  It was noted that there would be information in the annual report in relation to the type of contamination being found.

In terms of the customer friendliness topic, input from partners would be appreciated on how this should be measured.  In terms of being able to benchmark data, there was a proposal to ask the public a number of questions.  It was queried whether members were happy for all partners to ask the same questions, including questions about collections, household waste sites, and would districts be willing to ask these questions, or should they just ask questions about the services they deliver.  It was commented that people could associate services such as household waste sites with districts and then direct complaints about them to the districts.  It was suggested that one way around this would be that the questions were being asked on behalf of the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership, and then the Partnership would be responsible for dealing with the outcomes.

It was suggested that the term contamination was confusing for residents, as some materials were recyclable in other areas.  It was noted that this was why it was important to carry out analysis of the contamination, so that clearer messages could be provided to the public.

It was noted that the Lincolnshire Leaders and Chief Executives had agreed to hold a range of engagement events, and if there were specific questions the Partnership had, they were happy to combine these with their own.

RESOLVED

1.    Waste Hierarchy – that the LWP notes the charts and commentary provided

2.    Contamination – that the LWP notes the plan to assess the non-recyclable portion of MDR collections and including this KPI in reporting.

3.    Carbon – that the LWP notes that further information would follow as part of the Annual Report

4.    Customer Friendliness – that questions be asked on behalf of the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership.