‘Senseless parish waste collections must change’
GUERNSEY’S ‘senseless’ parish-based waste collection system needs to be overhauled to make it more efficient, States’ Trading Assets deputy managing director Richard Evans has said.
For the first time parishes are charging the refuse rate per property, rather than basing the figure on the size of the house.
This has highlighted a huge difference in charges. Several parishes are charging more than £100, with others as little as £65.
This system also means that waste is collected strictly by parish boundary and Mr Evans said this might not be the best system.
In 2017, the States’ Trading Supervisory Board estimated that moving from parish boundary-based collection rounds to an island-wide arrangement would potentially achieve savings of £150,000 to £250,000 per year through improved efficiencies.
‘Household waste and recycling collections are provided by the parishes,’ he said.
‘Until this year, they also covered the cost of disposal, which was then passed on to parishioners through the annual refuse rate, so each parish had to collect waste separately. For some that involved very small rounds.
‘Now, the parishes only cover collection costs, so there is no need to keep to historic parish boundaries. That is an opportunity to optimise rounds, and utilise vehicles and crews better, which offers the potential for greater efficiency.
‘There is also a possibility of unwinding some of the historic anomalies, such as roads which lie along parish boundaries, where one side is collected one night by one contractor, and another truck comes along on a different night to pick up from the others. Clearly that makes no sense.’
Major changes have taken place in refuse management, with the introduction of food waste collections and islanders being charged for each black bag they throw out. This has resulted in some contractors needing more vehicles.
‘We have just been through a major change,’ Mr Evans said.
‘The parishes and their contractors deserve a great deal of credit for how well they have managed that.
‘It was important to make that transition first, and allow the new services to bed in, before looking at further changes.
‘However, we will encourage parishes to look for opportunities for greater efficiency, potentially by working together, which could deliver savings for households.’
Under the new waste scheme islanders also pay a flat charge of £85 for the processing of their waste, as well as paying for stickers for black bags.
Last month the Guernsey Press collected figures as how much each parish was charging parishioners to collect waste.
Castel was the cheapest at £65.17 and St Saviour’s was the most expensive at between £104 and £105 – the parish still needs to go to court to get an exact figure. The discrepancy was blamed on it being more expensive to collect from rural parishes.
When that story was published, refuse rates for Forest and Torteval had not yet been released..
However this week the numbers were published. Forest parishioners are set to be charged about £107, while Torteval parishioners can expect refuse collection bills of £97.87.
However Torteval has used some of its reserves to drop the price from £105.
