To receive a presentation from Steve Longdon, Regional Director, and Adrian Clarke, General Manager, on the Annual Environment Report.
Minutes:
The Board received a presentation from Steve Longdon, Regional Director, and Adrian Clarke, General Manager, on the Annual Environment Report from FCC.
The Board noted that this was the ninth annual report and also marked the beginning of what the company hoped would be the Board and company working more closely in partnership for their mutual benefit. Adrian expressed his thanks to Oliver Burt and Steve Loudoun for the way that they had engaged with the difficult negotiations to reach agreement over the revised contract. Progress continued to be made in reaching a conclusion to the revised contract.
During the presentation and in response to questions, the Board’s attention was drawn to a number of key points including that:
· During 2014/15, average recovery performance had been 77.93%
· There had been 900,000 visits to the two sites.
· Customer satisfaction was rated as good or very good.
· Satisfaction with staff helpfulness was down from 89% to 78%, but this was likely to be due to an increase in the number of visitors and changing the questions to obtain more useful information..
· There had only been nine complaints and 14 compliments
· Total tonnage processed had been 199,077.
· Turn around faults were the main concern but at 1.6% out of almost 7000 visits were not significant.
· Training was to be increased to ensure levels of satisfaction were maintained and increased.
· The Longshot Lane web cam was receiving 2500 views per month and, in response to a question from the Board, the company indicated a willingness to look at installing one at Smallmead which would then be available to view on the new web site, although it was stressed the reason only one had previously been installed was that the sites had very different challenges with Longshot Lane being a more difficult site to manage due to its configuration.
· Recycling was down a bit but green waste was up a bit, but there was a need to think about driving them both up.
· Almost 23% of material was still being sent to landfill so the company was looking for quick wins to reduce this figure; it expected to increase recovery quickly but improving recycling would be more challenging.
· Landfill figures elsewhere were dependent upon what opportunities there were to provide alternative means of disposal, so there was no true benchmarking data available.
· The most cost effective way of dealing with wood was biomass but there were means of recycling it which could be explored to assess their cost-effectiveness.
· Whilst the composition of paper received had changed, there had been no dramatic drop-off as the reduction in newspapers and magazines had been balanced by an increase in packaging from home deliveries of other items.
The Board was advised that it gets more expensive to divert away from landfill the closer you get towards 0% The re3 contract was designed with landfill diverson as its principal aim and it has been successful. However, some items were still prohibitively expensive to dispose of other than by landfill. Therefore, it was stressed that whatever solutions were chosen they needed to be sustainable.
The Board was also advised that the Smallmead MRF was operating with a single shift four days per week and processing 28,000 tonnes. The plant had capacity to handle 58,000 tonnes and therefore there were commercial opportunities open to exploit this spare capacity, potentially by operating a second shift. It was stressed, however, that any increase in tonnage should be based on the right type of material as to accept any material might not deliver the full potential of the site as it was quality that drove the back end price.
The Board was also advised that the plant was complying with the WRAP and Environment Agency guidelines. 50% were non-compliant. However, the company was not complacent and had commissioned an audit of the application of the MRF Code Of Conduct.
In concluding, the Board was advised that performance had been strong but there was a need to do more in relation to customer satisfaction. The other priorities would be:
· Maintaining performance
· Improving recycling and recovery rates
· Maximising the value of the assets
The Board welcomed the report and thanked Adrian and Steve for attending the meeting. In view of the strengthening of the partnership, the Chairman invited Adrian to attend future meetings to give a brief update on progress and raise any issues.
RESOLVED that Adrian Clarke be invited to the first part of the Board’s future meetings.