Veolia has been named as the preferred bidder for an eight-year contract to deliver harmonised waste collection and street cleansing across four boroughs in South London.

Veolia and The Landscape Group (TLG) emerged from the South London’s Waste Partnership’s (SLWP) 18-month competitive tender procurement process as the two recommended bidders to deliver a range of environmental services on behalf of the boroughs of Sutton, Merton, Croydon and Kingston.

The four-borough collection service being proposed by Veolia would mirror the service it already operates in Kingston and Croydon, along with other London boroughs such as Bromley and Brent. This would include a separate weekly collection of food waste, an alternate weekly collection of dry recycling (paper and card one week; tins, plastic and glass the next) and a fortnightly collection of residual waste.

TLG is seeking to win a contract for parks, cemeteries and grounds maintenance services in Merton and Sutton.

The two eight-year contracts, which will have the option for extensions of eight or 16 years, are forecast to create savings for the four boroughs in excess of the £30-million savings target that was set at the start of the procurement process. The SLWP also says that the new contract would reduce waste production and increase recycling rates across the partnership’s area, adding that the changes will help the four boroughs maintain their positions as some of the ‘best’ recycling boroughs in London. In 2014/15, Merton recycled 37.5 per cent of its waste, Sutton managed 37.6 per cent recycling, Croydon registered 39.9 per cent, and Kingston 45.7 per cent.

By providing a harmonised service across the four boroughs, as well as its other London contracts, the Veolia contract would go some way towards fulfilling the wishes of the London Assembly’s Environment Committee, which earlier this year stated that standardising municipal waste collections was a key measure in mitigating the city’s rapid growth.

London’s recycling rate is currently static at 33 per cent, well short of its 2015 target of 45 per cent. The Green Alliance think tank and Resources Minister Rory Stewart have also called for more consistency in the city’s waste collection, with the latter bemoaning the ‘Berlin Walls’ caused by differing systems implemented in neighbouring boroughs. London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, has stated that it would be “unrealistic” to have only one collection system across the capital, though his manifesto promised he would get the city ‘back on track with hitting the 65 per cent [recycling] target by 2030’.

Harmonising services will ‘deliver high quality services’ and ‘significant savings’

Elected members of the partnership’s Joint Waste Committee will meet on 7 June to review the outcome of the procurement process, and will be asked to endorse the preferred bidder recommendations before they are put before relevant committees on each of the four partner boroughs. These meetings will take place in June and July.

Should the contracts be agreed, the new recycling and waste collection service is expected to roll out across Sutton in April 2017, Croydon and Merton in October 2018 and Kingston in 2022. ‘Flexibility and local sovereignty are key features of the new contracts’, according to the SLWP, and the four boroughs all have the ability to specify different start dates for different elements of the new contracts.

The councils of Croydon, Kingston, Merton and Sutton have been working in partnership on a variety of environmental services since 2003. Through contracts negotiated by the group, including two with Viridor to transfer and treat residual and recyclable waste, the partnership claims it will save its members £200 million between now and 2025.

Commenting on the decision to make Veolia its preferred bidder for the collection contract, Croydon Councillor Stuart Collins, Chair of the SLWP Joint Committee, said: “The four boroughs will spend a combined £38 million on delivering waste collection, street cleaning, winter gritting, parks and cemeteries maintenance services this year.

“We identified that by working together and harmonising services across the region we could all make significant savings and deliver high-quality services that local people value.”