As vice-chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Panel, Cllr Vanessa Churchman was in the unusual position of chairing a meeting last week that was taking place as a result of her own call-in.
Readers will remember that Cllr Churchman, with the backing of four other Independent councillors, had called in the Delegated Decision for the ‘Appointment of Technical Legal & Financial Advisors for Waste Procurement Project’.
Cllr Churchman had argued, “There was only one Elected Member briefing which did not provide sufficient detail to support decision. Mention was made of a 25 year contract with no supporting evidence, either verbal or written.”
Decision voted through
The Scrutiny meeting, which ran for just over an hour and a half, resulted in a majority vote in favour of the Delegated Decision to appoint the advisors.
A budget of £500,000 for waste contract advisors in 2012/13 was agreed at February’s full council meeting and the Delegated Decision was to appoint legal, technical and financial advisors with respective budgets of £120k, £190k and £190k.
Taking part in the meeting were Cllrs Giles, Whittle, Bingham, Cameron, Jones-Evans, Webster, Stewart, Bacon, Fuller, Warlow and Stephens and officers Dave Burbage, Jay Jayasundara and Steve Beynon also took part in the meeting.
Council leader David Pugh was present but did not take part in discussions.
Why the call-in?
All members named on the call-in had the opportunity to talk before questions were raised.
Cllr Churchman went through the points raised on the call-in notice and was keen to express her wishes for a waste strategy to cover municipal and business waste.
At the moment, Island Waste deal with domestic waste and Biffa have a contract for business waste. She raised the subject of the Waste Improvement Network (as previously mentioned on VB) and expressed concern that up to £500,000 would be spent on advisors.
Lack of background information
Cllr Stephens expressed his concern at what he called a lack of background information in the Delegated Decision Report.
He told members that he supported the call-in because it was important to discuss the details further, before any form of approval. He put particular emphasis on the lack of breakdown of costs or timescales and returned to these issues several times during the meeting.
Cllr Bacon concurred with what had been said by Cllrs Churchman and Stephens and later raised many questions in relation to the wording of the documentation and lack of sufficient information.
Scope of framework not wide enough
Cllr Giles told the meeting that the framework mentioned by Cllr Churchman would not be appropriate for the Island’s needs, as the unitary authority is responsible for both waste collection and disposal.
He went on to say that if the IWC used the IESE framework they would miss out being able to raise income from waste through the possibility of recycling or anaerobic digestion plant.
He stressed the need to spend ‘up to’ £500,000 in 2012/13 in order to get good advice.
“Open and transparent”
Cllr Giles declared that he was “all for being open and transparent”, adding that the briefing, although only one, was comprehensive and further information was offered to members.
He said that two members had been in touch since to request further info.
Cllr Churchman argued that the one hour briefing told members what they already know and that documentation was not easy to find. Even officers in Members’ Services found it difficult to locate.
Questions by other members
Members of the ruling party asked Cllr Giles questions such as why IWC shouldn’t use the framework, what benefits and risks there were to appointing advisors, how much the current contract was earning for the council, whether the reason the IWC was why looking at anaerobic digestion methods was to avoid landfill tax, whether if IWC didn’t use specialist advisor we would end up in a position similar to the last 12 years and how often members’ review board meeting would be.
Cllr Bacon, as a member of the call-in group, sought to get clarification on several issues. He questioned whether advisors were needed in part to complete the waste strategy?
Comparison with Bournemouth council
Cllr Stephens explained that he had spoken with Bournemouth council, going on to say that they had procured their waste strategy in-house at a cost of £95,000. With a population of 500,000 residents, the contract had just four staff dealing with it.
He went on to say that both Portsmouth and Southampton have incinerators, but not enough waste to power the plants. If other councils with larger populations couldn’t maintain the necessary levels, how would IW be able to he asked?
Cllr Giles replied that Bournemouth dealt only with collection of waste and not disposal so it was not a fair comparison. Figures given were best estimates and maximums rather than actually figures.
Ford Mondeo not Rolls Royce solution
Cllr Churchman asked why, as one of smallest councils in the country, why were IWC looking for a Rolls Royce solution?
Cllr Giles replied that it was ‘more a Ford Mondeo solution’ and that the final decisions weren’t close to being made yet. That was the point of expert advisors, he said.
More detail from PFI expert
Jay Jayasundara, Highways PFI programme director, explained that the base strategy was to recycle more and raise income from the waste disposal.
He said there were no pre-conceived ideas of how to deal with the waste, be it on the Island or mainland.
The Outline Business Case would identify a series of options, he said, and the need to know what sizes of anaerobic digesters etc were available and would be suitable.
All the research would be carried out by experts in the field, he said, adding that it was not practical or feasible to employ these experts full time, when they were only needed for maybe ten hours a day for five days a year. The Outline Business Case is a short-term picture giving a benchmark.
Approval of decision proposed
Cllr Jones Evans proposed that the Scrutiny Panel accept the Delegated Decision to appoint the advisors. This was seconded by Cllr Webster.
Cllr Churchman proposed and amendment that the IWC first explore what other councils were doing relevant to size and explore what Defra can offer.
The legal officer advised that the amendment could not be accepted as it changed the proposed motion too much.
Minor amendment accepted
Cllr Bingham suggested that a minor amendment be made to ensure that the regular reports go to the Environment Scrutiny committee. Amendment accepted by Cllr Jones Evans and voted upon.
Six voted in favour (all Conservative members), whilst four voted against (all Independent members).
Image: Carolina Naftali under CC BY 2.0
