CROYDON IN CRISIS: You could not make this up. After four south London councils sacked their waste contractors for poor service, and hundreds of thousands of pounds were spent on a procurement process, Croydon is about to follow Sutton in handing an eight-year contract to the company they sacked. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
You’ve bin done: meet the new rubbish contractors, same as the old rubbish contractors
Rubbish contractors Veolia are set to be handed an eight-year deal, worth around £40million, to keep Croydon’s streets clean and residents’ bins emptied – barely two years after the company was sacked by Croydon and three other south London boroughs for failing to keep streets clean and residents’ bins emptied.
An official council report to be presented at next week’s council cabinet meeting lays the groundwork for the decision, revealing that after a two-year procurement process that cost the cash-strapped council hundreds of thousands of pounds, Croydon was left with a Hobson’s Choice over its service provider.
Because while there were originally two approved bidders, one dropped out, giving the council no real choice at all over who might get the contract.
The cabinet report keeps the amounts to be paid and the successful bidder strictly secret, in the “Part B” of the report only seen by councillors.
But Sutton Council, another member of the South London Waste Partnership who “sacked” Veolia in 2022, have let the cat out of the bag by revealing that they have re-appointed the rubbish contractors under a similar, parallel eight-year deal, due to commence in March 2025.
And this is all after Sutton and other SLWP members Merton and Croydon determined that Veolia just were not good enough…
Veolia have swept Croydon’s streets and emptied its residents’ bins sporadically since 2003. In 2017, on recommendation from Croydon, Veolia was given an eight-year deal across all four SLWP boroughs. When signed, the contract was worth “over £209million”, according to Veolia, and included the possibility of two eight-year extensions.
The switch quickly led to complaints over poor standards of service in Merton and Sutton, giving rise to their very own hashtags of #MuckyMerton and #SuttonBinShame. This was followed in due course by the takeover of many of Croydon’s pavements by large black wheelie bins through the Veolia-imposed #Binmageddon.
The money being paid by the councils under the negotiated contract soon proved to be less than the true cost of delivering the service that residents, and councils, expected or required.
#Binmageddon: the borough’s streets have been taken over by Veolia’s wheelie bins – at the behest of the rubbish contractor
Having won the 2017 procurement round by bidding lower than their commercial rivals, Veolia were able to negotiate incremental increases in their fees towards meeting expectations. In 2020, Croydon gave Veolia a £21milion contract “uplift” to buy a better service. When even that wasn’t enough, Croydon removed more than 1,000 waste bins from the borough’s streets, so that Veolia didn’t have to empty them any longer, and save on their costs.
All to no avail…
By 2022, Croydon together with Sutton and Merton were expressing “significant and ongoing concerns” with Veolia’s performance and issue the contractor with a Service Improvement Notice.
In October 2022, Labour-controlled Merton broke the news that it was “set to exit its contract with Veolia Ltd for street cleaning and waste collection when it ends in 2025”.
Now, the new deals agreed by Sutton and about to be rubber-stamped by Mayor Jason Perry’s cabinet, will include “borough-specific service priorities and performance standards”. But to all intents and purposes, Veolia are off the hook as far as this multi-million-pound chunk of business in south London is concerned.
Veolia fan: Sutton’s Barry ‘Biggles’ Lewis
Sutton agreed their deal with Veolia in March. Their procurement process is suggested to have cost £500,000. The deal, Sutton says, “focuses on providing the highest levels of customer service to Sutton residents”. Which seems to suggest that the previous/current deal does not…
New, eco-friendly electric bin lorries, more frequent waste bag collections from the streets and an overnight fly-tip flying squad are promised as part of Sutton’s deal.
Barry “Biggles” Lewis, now the leader of LibDem-controlled Sutton Council, said of the new Veolia contract, “We have listened to our residents’ experiences of the current waste contract when choosing a new partner.” Lewis described “a rigorous selection process” which ended up appointing the same company that they had sacked little more than 18 months earlier. “From this process, it was clear Veolia understood our ambitions and recognised where they themselves could make improvements.”
Croydon’s report ahead of next Wednesday’s cabinet meeting does its best to disguise the latest abject failure in procurement conducted by the “sustainable communities, regeneration and economic recovery” department under director Nick Hibberd.
That’s the same people who paid millions to buy ANPR cameras from America that fail to recognise British vehicle number plates, and who in three years have yet to replace the bus shelters which were uprooted in 2021 on a promise of a get-rich-quick deal with a fly-by-night American company. The disastrous public libraries consultation, which recommended four libraries for closure despite opposition from 66% of the Croydon public, was also conducted on Hibberd’s watch.
So maybe no one should be surprised by the rubbish outcome of Hibberd’s bins negotiation.
The report lays out the background: “At the cabinet meeting on November 24, 2022, the executive mayor…”, that means piss-poor Perry, “agreed that the current waste collection and street cleansing contract with Veolia ES UK is not extended following expiry of the initial term on March 31 2025.
Rubbish Mayor: Jason Perry has hiked Council Tax by 21% and has looked at charging extra for replacement bins
“In addition, he agreed that further work was to be undertaken and alternative options for the provision of different delivery models explored.”
The report goes on to say that the negotiation has sought to “reshape the future waste collection and street cleansing service in line with financial affordability”. In other words, the council is brassic, and this seems to suggest that Croydon won’t be able to afford the sort of service that its residents, who pay the second highest Council Tax in London, might deserve or expect.
“The report concludes that following a comprehensive procurement exercise the best value option which allows the council to improve the waste collection, recycling and street cleansing within an agreed financial parameter is to award a new contract to the preferred Bidder A named in the Part B report.” Smart money’s on Veolia…
And the report speaks of the “aim of implementing an enhanced client contract management team focused on holding the contractor to account in the delivery of these high-profile services”. There’s no detail offered of what this “enhanced” contract management might involve. Fingers crossed that Veolia will no longer be allowed to self-monitor their performance, as they were under the previous sweetheart deal.
“The identity of the preferred bidder will be released following the award decision, in accordance with usual practice,” the report says. Which is nice.
There might be one other significant cause for residents’ concern over the way this deal has been carved up.
Missed meetings: Natasha Irons, now a Labour MP
Although not involved to the same extent, the SLWP will still be playing a role in the management of Croydon’s Veolia contract.
The SLWP is an unaccountable quango which is supposedly overseen by a committee of councillors from each of the four partner boroughs.
In the 16 months since June 2023, the SLWP has met just three times. In 2023, Merton was the lead council for the SLWP, with responsibility for calling meetings at which important issues such as waste contractor contract negotiations and the toxic pollution from the SLWP-sponsored incinerator at Beddington were supposed to be discussed in the public interest.
In 2023, the chair of the SLWP committee was Councillor Natasha Irons, now the Labour MP for Croydon East.
Read more: BINMAGEDDON: Mayor’s secret plan to charge £5 per new bin
Read more: ‘Red alert’ over increased costs with outsourced rubbish deal
Read more: Croydon and three other boroughs to bin Veolia rubbish deal
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
A £40 million eight year contract with the only remaining bidder after the other one dropped out! Hard to be sure that you are getting value for money. I’d want to re tender but have Croydon left themselves with no alternative?
Veolia – bin there, done us.
The South London Waste Partnership is unable to create a tendering process attractive to quality contractors, the winner of which should deliver a reliable cost-effective value-for-money service. SLWP’s very size probably acts as a deterrent, as only the largest companies will put in a bid.
Nor is the SLWP able (or willing) to put together a local authority consortium to take on Veolia’s near monopoly in London.
The SLWP should either be disbanded or Croydon should just leave it. Sticking with it just means we get ripped off by Veolia, a company which doesn’t meet its legal or contractual obligations to keep our streets squeaky clean, just takes ever more of our money while running rings around our councillors
Saddest thing about this s that I’m not surprised.
When an offender is reappointed to continue to offend it does slightly give a clue that all is not well in the world. When democracy can no longer effect a change to solve a problem it tells you that there is a fundamental problem with the democracy and the freedom of choice it is able to provide.
Sack the lot. A council tax wasting exercise on a giant scale. The depressing truth is, it does not matter which political party is im charge. It seems incompetence goes across party lines…
It isn’t the politicians running the council. It’s bureaucrats who refuse to be accountable
Who are these ‘quality contractors’ Arfur? I think we should be told. I’m very happy, btw, with my service and street cleaning.
A lot of the street bins (black with gold lettering) have disappeared. Maybe that’s to plan to stop unemptied bins, is to remove them altogether. Croydon Council logic.
Will they actually train their staff how to use the street sweepers, so they don’t leave black streaks everywhere? They make the streets MORE dirty, not cleaner. Will they actually clean the big belly bins? They stink.