Agenda and minutes

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the Joint Waste Disposal Board held on 7 September 2021.

The minutes of the meeting of the informal Joint Waste Disposal Board held on the 7 September 2021, be approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

There were no urgent items of business.

To brief the re3 Joint Waste Disposal Board on progress in the delivery of the re3 Joint Waste PFI Contract.

The Board received a report on progress in the delivery of the re3 Joint Waste PFI Contract.

The report covered:

·       re3 and Council Performance Statistics

·       Environment Bill

·       Kerbside Glass Recycling

·       Mixed Glass

·       Reuse Pop-Up Shop

·       Rigid Plastics Recycling Trial

·       Recycling Centre Usage

·       User Satisfaction

·       Chargeable Wastes at HWRC

·       re3Grow Compost

·       Communications

Sarah Innes reported the performance statistics for all three Council, the provisional recycling rates for quarter 2 were:

BFC – 56.9%

RBC – 51.8%

WBC – 56.6%

Bracknell and Reading were following a similar trend, in that both quarter one figures were higher than quarter two. However, Wokingham had a higher recycling rate in quarter two, but this seemed to relate to the amount of green waste collected during this period. This had dropped off in October’s figures due to the suspension in the kerbside recycling collection, so would be interesting to see whether the figures increased again in November’s statistics. 

At the last meeting of the Board, contamination was discussed, particularly in Bracknell where the level looked like it was increasing. However, now more data had been gathered, it looked like the contamination levels were in line with previous years, which was still high across all three Council, so work would be looked at to see how these could be brought down.

The recycling rates for the re3 recycling centres were 70.3% for Longshot Lane and 73.9% at Smallmead these were lower than the previous year, it was hard to work out why this was, but earlier in there year there were some restrictions on residual waste capacity for kerbside, so this could have affected the rates, alongside covid, kerbside waste suspensions and lockdowns.

Commendations were given to the pop-up shop, where £500 had been raised over that weekend. A trial run of the shop in each of the Councils areas would be proposed in 2022, keeping one eye on both the weather and covid situation. Oliver would be in touch with each Council in the new year.

On the 10 November 2021, the Environment Act had been passed into UK law. This had been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. It was expected that the detail of this act would be released in Spring 2022.

In January 2020 Members undertook to consider kerbside glass collection following the roll-out of new kerbside waste collections, it was expected that as part of the new Environment Act that this would become mandatory. The situation remained unclarified between the anticipation of the deposit return scheme and the mandatory kerbside glass collection, which was causing some councils, who didn’t have kerbside recycling, to wonder how those two things would fit efficiently together. It was important that the Board had a proper look at the issue, but it was requested to wait until the secondary legislation had been released so the detail was known before work was undertaken.

It was requested that the full cost of collection of glass was calculated across the Boroughs, however it was suggested that this may not be able  ...  view the full minutes text for item 51.

To consider the following motion:

That pursuant to Regulation 21 of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to Information) Regulations 2000 and having regard to the public interest, members of the public and press be excluded from the meeting for the consideration of item 8 which involves the likely disclosure of exempt information under the following category of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972:

(3)      Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person.

That pursuant to Regulation 21 of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to Information) Regulations 2000 and having regard to the public interest, members of the public and press be excluded from the meeting for the consideration of item 6 which involves the likely disclosure of exempt information under the following category of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972:

(3)        Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person.

To brief the re3 Joint Waste Disposal Board on the Partnership’s current financial position, to confirm the second draft budget.

The Board received the Finance Report which briefed the re3 Joint Waste Disposal Board on the Partnership’s current financial position and confirmed the second draft budget.

RESOLVED that

       i.         Members note the Partnership’s financial position for the year to date.

     ii.         Members approve the recommendation to update the Joint Working Agreement to include the use of the Booking System patronage data, for the purposes of budget-setting each year, as described at 5.31 within the report.

    iii.         Members note the contents of the report.

3 March 2022

The next meeting would be held at 9.30am on 3 March 2022.

It was requested by Reading and Bracknell Board Members that the findings of the review undertaken by a consultant for Wokingham Borough Council be shared with the Board.