Businesses are being urged to tender for essential council services of rubbish and recycling collection, street cleaning and parks and open space maintenance worth more than £15million per year with contracts lasting several years.

By going to the market the council is aiming to test if bringing the services together would reduce costs while maintaining the high service standards that have been achieved.

The current refuse and recycling and street cleaning contract is held by May Gurney Recycling. This was awarded in 2005 for seven years.

The grounds maintenance contract is operated by Veolia ES (UK) Limited and is due to come to an end in March 2011 but will be extended to allow a new, potentially combined, contract to start from Spring 2012.

Cabinet member for Transport and Environment, Councillor Bassam Mahfouz, said:

“Our current contractors have achieved a standard of performance we are very pleased with. In the challenging financial climate we are keen to check whether by bringing these two contracts together and restructuring them we can achieve even better standards at lower costs.”

The decision to invite tenders for the contracts was made by the council’s Cabinet on Tuesday, 22 June. All Cabinet decisions are subject to call-in for a period of five working days from the date of publication of the minutes of the meeting, which was on 25 June.

21 July 2010