A challenging but exciting month

Swindon Borough Council leader Cllr Jim Robbins writes for Swindon Link

It has been a challenging but exciting month. 

We have spent time reaching out to residents on our Swindon Plan, and it has been great to get such considered feedback and feel some real positivity around what the council is trying to do, but the experience since Christmas has also reinforced our sense that we have to be delivering on the basics as well as driving forward the organisation. 

Since Christmas, there have been repeated delays in some people having their waste and recycling collected and I want to apologise for the inconvenience caused. The challenges have come about because the new vehicles that were brought in to run the new system couldn’t cope with the amount of waste we were dealing with over Christmas. 

We are currently going through a lessons-learned exercise to understand what caused the problem and how best to deal with it, and to make sure that we don’t have similar issues next Christmas. 

At the time of writing, we think that the vehicles will be able to cope with the usual amounts of recycling but we will need contingency plans for when the service is stretched such as Christmas with extra waste and the summer holidays when staff take leave. As Labour councillors, we didn’t design the new system or choose the vehicles or blue bags as these decisions were taken by the Conservative councillors when they ran the council, but we were responsible for the implementation of the new system, so I’m happy to take responsibility for that and apologise where it has been an issue for people.

I am pleased that the new system has delivered some positives in that we have already seen a bigger than expected collection of food waste, which is really driving our recycling rate up and cutting the amount that we are putting into to landfill. Putting waste into landfill costs us over £100 a ton, so we are starting to deliver costs savings. I want to reassure residents that we will be making sure we use some of the money saved to ensure that the system consistently works properly going forward. 

I’m hugely grateful to all residents who have fed into the Let’s Talk Swindon sessions as we develop the Swindon plan taking our three missions forward, as well as to the council staff and partner organisations who also contributed their opinions. The missions are around reducing inequality, building a better Swindon and achieving our net zero targets. 

The sessions have really helped us develop a set of clear, costed targets for each of the missions for the next three years, and it has been great to hear residents setting out how the missions could have a lasting impact on their lives.

I was really clear when we started this engagement process that I wanted it to be meaningful consultation and that we needed to change and develop the plan as people fed in their ideas. I’ve really enjoyed the process of taking it out to residents and been struck by how many positive comments we received about the process. 

There is still a lot of work for us to do in terms of collating the feedback and updating the plan, making sure that it reflects the comments and feedback we have been given, and then the really hard work of delivering the plan will start. 

There is also the small matter of another round of local elections coming where we will be working to convince you that we have made a really constructive start to our time in office, and hoping to persuade you to continue to support us to build the better Swindon that we all want to see.