Agenda item

To consider progress in delivering the Environment Corporate Priority.

Members considered the Progress of Corporate Priority – Environment.

Members made comments, asked questions, and received responses as follows:

·         Councillor Roy stated that in the report it mentions that FDC approved 154 properties for energy related grants and he would like to know if any of that success has been measured or if there has been any feedback from information collated from recipients of those grants and if the financial outcomes or reductions in carbon footprint were achieved? Annabel Tighe responded one of the big projects is the home upgrade grant funding from Central Government and the project works through a partnership which is led by Cambridgeshire City Council on behalf of all the District and local authorities. She stated that 154 properties have been allocated for the opportunity for the funding, they have not all accepted to go ahead but the key performance measure is using the energy performance certificate which is a recognised method of what the efficiency of the property is currently and what improvement could be made, and those are graded from A to G so there would need to be an improvement in terms of the work put in place. Annabel Tighe continued, in terms of the written feedback to the questions asked previously, there is a survey that is completed with residents but because that data is held by the City Council this is not available but for future reports the feedback can be included.

·         Councillor Roy stated that residents often express their frustration about the inappropriate use of FDC operated car parks, there is a trend where the car parks because they are free are being used by people who have got bus passes which results in reduced car parking spaces. He asked what are the current plans for FDC car parks and how use can be regulated? Garry Edwards responded the Council has been looking over the last few years to introduce Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE) which would allow regulation of car parks both off-street and the on-street areas, but due to the shortage in funding for introducing CPE that is currently on hold and the only other choice would be to introduce a district wide off-street parking policy order which would allow more enforcement for all of the sites. He stated that currently the Council has 28 parking facilities, 21 of those are public car parks and 7 are associated with Council public buildings, but only 6 of the car parks have off-street parking place orders on them which makes it difficult to enforce some of those overstaying or vehicles being used for the motor trade etc. being stored in the car parks. Garry Edwards continued the reason why there has not been a district wide order is because investigations are in place to look at CPE, and this is something the Council needs to decide if it wants to introduce in the future. Councillor Roy stated that the loss of income by not having CPE given that the communities across the whole of Fenland have grown maybe outweigh the reasons for not having this in place. He asked are there any timelines or is it on the agenda for review and how long after the off-street parking will this come into play? Garry Edwards stated to his knowledge there is no proposal to introduce car park charging, if the Council was to introduce CPE there would be no income generated through pay parking it would only be through prosecution of fixed penalty notices, generally speaking those CPEs do not run with a profit unless there is pay parking which means they would run at a deficit in the absence of paid parking. He stated that if the Council does not introduce CPE and decides to go along the off-street parking route across the district, then the Council could prosecute offenders through fix penalty notices or by using a penalty charge notice system but the more enforcement that is carried out the more resources will be needed.

·         Councillor Barber asked while CPE is on hold are there any plans for restricting parking in the local car parks with the view to time and if that is in the plan how would it be enforced? Garry Edwards responded as mentioned there are very few parking place orders on the car parks locally and the ones that do have off-street parking place orders have the maximum stay period which is 24 hours this then becomes difficult to enforce for overstaying because what constitutes the start and the end of one 24-hour period. He stated that CPE is very different to a off-street parking place order, and if the Council determines not to move forward with the CPE because of the shortage of funding which it faces presently, the only way that an off-street parking place order can be used across the district would be to agree to designate which car parks are short or long stay and each car park would then have a new maximum stay period which would be determined by members.

·         Councillor Nawaz asked for clarification on the statement in the presentation around landfill waste credits. Mark Mathews responded recycling credits are a legal requirement for the County Council (CC) in a two-tier authority, for every tonne of material that is processed for recycling CC provided a recycling credit which is currently £58 and the 1.5 million pounds shown in the presentation is the offset costs, if that material were to have all gone to landfill that is how much it would have cost the CC.

·         Councillor Nawaz asked for clarification concerning fly tipping in Wisbech and the rampant problem shown in the presentation figures and asked why there no extra CCTV cameras in place? Councillor Murphy responded there is always a need for more CCTV cameras in the area, but it is a challenge to fix cameras in place as there is a large amount of theft of these cameras especially in the more rural areas. He stated that the fly tipping in Wisbech shows as a larger issue within the figures because Wisbech is the biggest town out of the four main towns in the district and covers a larger rural area. Councillor Nawaz suggested the Council investigate this in more detail to define a cause so that a solution could be found. Councillor Murphy agreed that this is something that could be achieved.

·         Councillor Barber asked what is the main cause of the issues in relation to recycling bins being rejected? Councillor Murphy responded a lot of the rejections are to do with the wrong items being put into the recycling bins and in the past sticker were added to bins that were not emptied with the reason why and although this did work it was very time consuming, but the Council are looking to bring this back in next year as a reminder of what recycling needs to go into the blue bin etc. Councillor Barber stated that in her ward people are keen to recycle but feels there is not enough information reminding the public to wash their tins out etc. Councillor Murphy stated that the Council have tried a variety of ways to get the message across and if members had any ideas, he would welcome the feedback.

·         Councillor Booth stated he would like to understand why FDC are performing poorly compared to its peers in Cambridgeshire regarding the recycling rate and what is the overall plan to improve this? Councillor Murphy stated that the figures shown in the presentation and the figures published from DEFRA are compiled in a different way. Councillor Booth stated he understands that DEFRA set the standard for all councils to report, so it is comparing all councils against one another and the report clearly shows that FDC are doing poorly against other peers in Cambridgeshire. He made the point that the report shows that Cambridge has a disposal of 48% whereas Fenland has a disposal of 37% and it appears that Fenland are dragging down the recycling figures and he would like to understand what improvements FDC are going to make to improve this situation. Mark Mathews agreed it is the data and how it is analysed, when looking at this from a county perspective accepting RECAP includes Peterborough as well but when looking at the County Council figures the Fenland customers do recycle their household waste well with a rate of above 50%. He stated that the other thing to bear in mind is there is a correlation between demographics and recycling performance so to compare FDC with some of the other districts within Cambridgeshire is unreasonable but he did agree there was more that could be done. Mark Mathews added after the last task and finish group the figures were looked at in detail and the resolution of that was that the Council would wait to see what the now called ‘simpler recycling guidance’ would put forward because this is a recycling rate of residual waste where organics are included and it is not a reasonable measure across the whole of the country because the services are different, one of the biggest impacts is that when the Council compares itself to East Cambs they offer a free garden waste collection and their residual waste is collected on a weekly basis which makes it unreasonable to compare. He stated that when looking at the figures in the report shown today the 45% recycling rate is a simple comparison of what the customer puts in the blue bin and what is put in the residual bin and this is the behaviour that the Council wants to focus on which is why the figures were produced, the DEFRA figures also include fly tipping, litter, and street sweeping which as a local council cannot be directly influenced and taint that figure so to have an actual balance of behaviour to change as a performance measure that can be reported in real time is reflected in the performance indicator. Mark Mathews continued as a recommendation the Council are waiting to see what the new Government figures are and if carbon and energy are included or something that moves away from weight because as the manufacturers start to change and reduce packaging this can have a direct impact on the recycling rate but to sum up with the growth in planning the residual waste has gone down and the recycling rate has stayed the same and with the implementation of food waste this will create a new platform for people to engage. Councillor Booth stated he took the comments on board and as a committee recommend that a plan is developed to improve recycling rates once the guidance has been published.

·         Councillor Hicks stated there is an income which is generated through subscriptions to the brown bin, where does the income in relation to the garden waste subscription end up within the Council, is it ring fenced and what happens if there are any extras or any short falls? Councillor Murphy responded the income generated through the garden waste subscription does not run at a profit because it is unable to with the way it has been set up. He added that the Finance Team look at the running cost and the only reason subscriptions are increased is to cover the cost-of-living increases like petrol, wages and maintenance with no profit made, this year it will be in a deficit which is why the yearly subscription payment has been increased.

·         Councillor Hicks asked what the plans are regarding all the extra houses being built and due to be built in the future within the Fens? Councillor Murphy stated this is being assessed all the time, each time a new set of houses are being built the Council carry out a round control to see how the bin rounds can be managed more effectively or if a new round needs to be added.

·         Councillor Mrs Davis stated in the report that waste is now being sorted and processed for onward sale to Biffa’s Edmonton plant. She would like to know what the carbon footprint of transporting waste over a distance such as this, and how does that compare to the environmental impact of simply not recycling in this way and is there a better way to do it? Mark Mathews responded the Council are in the initial phase of the contract with the Biffa plant as they won the tender and the Council will benefit as it is in partnership with all of the authorities across Peterborough as this was a joint tender and procurement that the County Council ran for FDC so that it could deliver best value for money. He stated that when looking at the recycling and the carbon impact the bigger picture has to be taken into account as the MRF is only the first step as this is where the materials are sorted into their constituent parts they then go onwards across England to then be processed into something that can be returned back into whatever recycling system is appropriate, and it is important that the customer continues to separate their waste because there is a huge amount of energy in that waste, their textiles and eventually their food waste as plans are in place to implement that.

·         Councillor Booth asked about the Community Safety Partnership and the action plan as there is no reference to road safety and speeding and this appears to have dropped off the radar and he requested it be put back in as this is a big issue for residents. He also went on the say he felt that community engagement could be happening at the big events that are held across the rural villages throughout the year as there will be a captive audience rather that arranging small coffee mornings that attract around 10 villagers. Councillor Wallwork agreed with Councillor Booth and added, if the committee are invited, they will attend plus she will ask the committee to flag up the events across the year and put some plans in place to attend.

·         Councillor Barber asked if there were somewhere the Street Pride groups could find out the actual days the verges are being cut in their area? Councillor Murphy responded unfortunately this cannot be planned as other elements can interfere with the process like road works or the weather, there is a list, but it changes day by day. Councillor Barber responded when Street Pride are out litter picking after the grass verges have been cut some plastics are shredded and hard to pick up which is why it would be convenient to know before hand so the verge can be cleared before it is cut. Councillor Booth added that some parishes do verge cutting on behalf of the County Council which are carried out by local contractors, and he suggested talking to Parish Councils to see if this is undertaken by them then from there liaise with the contractor.

Members noted the progress against the Environment priorities.