Waste management company Biffa has been awarded the contract to deliver Manchester City Council’s waste collection and street cleaning services for the next eight years.

The move follows a year-long tendering process which will see bin collections and street cleansing combined under the same contract. The two services were previously carried out by Manchester Enterprise, owned by Amey (following Enterprise's purchase by Amey’s parent company Ferrovial in 2013), and council workers respectively.

It is hoped that placing the two services under one contract will ‘ensure the work can be carried out more efficiently’ with ‘a single consistent team of workers’ responsible for both services.

All employees currently involved in waste collection and street cleaning will be moved over to Biffa, with no change to pay or conditions.

Biffa will continue to run Manchester’s current waste and recycling service covering the city’s 220,000 homes. The fortnightly scheme takes residual waste and paper and card one week, and glass, cans, and plastics on the other week, along with food and garden waste. This provision will not change following the switch.

Move part of Manchester’s ‘long-term strategy’

Speaking after the announcement of the new contract, Pete Dickson, Biffa Municipal’s Commercial Director, said: “Winning the contract for Manchester, one of England’s largest and highest profile cities, is a real feather in Biffa’s cap, and we look forward to working with the city for many years to come.

“Biffa is totally committed to providing the city’s residents with quality recycling, refuse and street cleansing services, that aim to help drive up Manchester’s recycling rate and reinforce its green credentials.”

Councillor Bernard Priest, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council, said: "This is a straightforward tender procurement exercise, not a change of policy for the city council.

"We’ve included street cleaning in the contract because it makes a lot of sense to have both pieces of work carried out by the same team, and this is part of our long-term strategy for transforming the cleanliness of Manchester.”

This long-term strategy recently saw the council undertake a ‘city-wide deep clean’, paid for by the city council’s £14.5 million Clean City fund.

As part of the campaign to improve the city’s environment, the council also provided more that 600 new bins in the area and established an enforcement team to crack down on litter. Since starting work at the end of 2014, they have issues around 1,400 fixed penalty notices to people spotted dropping litter.

Priest commented: "We’re currently spending a large part of the Clean City fund on a major deep clean of Manchester’s neighbourhoods, but as that comes to an end, the new contract will come into effect and enable us to keep those streets clean.

"However, we still require the ongoing support of the people of Manchester, the overwhelming majority of whom are proud of their neighbourhoods and want to help us keep our streets clean by not dropping litter."

Amey taking on Trafford ‘super contract’

Manchester City Council’s previous bin-collector, Amey, meanwhile, recently announced that it has been awarded a ‘super contract’ with Trafford Council last week to provide a range of services including waste collections, street lighting, street cleaning, drainage, and public park maintenance for the next 23 years.

The contract is worth £12 million a year to the service provider, who take over waste collections from Veolia.

It is estimated that the ‘super contract’ will deliver a minimum of 20 per cent savings against the net budget from contract commencement. At present, these services account for £15 million of the council’s £150 million total spend.

The contract is due to be signed during April with a mobilisation period to June and contracts starting ‘no later than July 2015’.

Leader of Trafford Council, Councillor Sean Anstee, commented on the new contract: “I am confident that the right contractor has been chosen to fulfil this brief…

“Trafford Council has to realise revenue savings of £57m in the coming years and we cannot keep up the same level of service without looking at different ways of providing services. This is just one of the ways we are Reshaping Trafford Council’s services to find alternative ways of providing services; residents should not see a change in the maintenance of the borough as a result.

“The Executive and I are confident that this is the right thing to do to retain services for residents and protect jobs.”

Find out more about Manchester City Council’s rubbish and recycling scheme.