Concerns have been raised over whether a struggling waste service can deliver its savings target of more than £750,000 this year.
Southampton City Council’s waste service is one of the key areas of the local authority currently in the midst of a thorough transformation programme.
Conservative opposition group leader Cllr Peter Baillie said the savings targets of £767,000 specifically relating to the department was “ambitious”, adding that he was unsure if it was “realistic”.
Last month, members of the council’s overview and scrutiny management committee quizzed cabinet member for environment and net zero Cllr John Savage and senior officers over the waste service transformation.
They requested a detailed breakdown of the savings that had been pencilled in for the current year.
A paper, published ahead of the committee’s next meeting on Thursday, November 20, outlined six activity areas to meet the savings targets:
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Reduction in agency staff expenditure – £350,000
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Reduction in hired refuse collection vehicles – £53,000
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Garden waste increased income – £50,000
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Commercial waste increased income – £200,000
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Reduced waste disposal costs through removal of overallocated bins – £75,000
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Service productive and redesign of management structure – £39,000
Cllr Baillie said: “It is an ambitious target and one worries that an ambitious target has been put upon a service which is already stretched and in difficulty.
“Is the ambitious target really realistic? Unfortunately only time is going to tell on that.”
The Harefield ward member said achieving additional income was always difficult, particularly with the level of garden waste collections that were had been missed.
As reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, 1,981 garden waste bins were missed in the first seven months of the year.
The council savings document said there were additional activities linked to over service areas across environment services in the transformation programme.
It added that a comprehensive breakdown on how future savings for the waste service would be achieved was currently under development.
Cllr Baillie said the lack of detailed information had been an issue all the way through the transformation programme, which started in summer 2024.
He said: “It is difficult to argue against because they are producing a figure and then they are going to get some detailed savings to get to that figure.
“The detailed savings are still not yet available and until they are it is difficult to have confidence in the fact that they are going to make the savings.”
At last month’s scrutiny meeting, officers were asked if it was difficult to deliver savings when the waste service was not performing as it should for residents, with a need to invest in replacing the vehicle fleet.
Rob Harbour, interim director for environment, said: “I don’t think it would be right to sit here and say that waste is some exceptional service that should outside of seeking to find savings.
“I think it is around how we try to find savings where we can and I think there is scope for us to do that through how we improve the service and productivity but of course some of that will require some upfront investment in order to ensure that we can realise both improvements in service and also savings.”
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