Residents in the borough of Merton have complained of illegal waste dumping
(Picture: @ChrisLydon1)South Londoners have been assured their streets will remain clear of rubbish as Merton Council confirms it has scrapped its street cleaning and waste collection contract with Veolia UK.
The contract will end in 2025 after numerous complaints of poor street cleanliness from residents, with the borough being nick named ‘Mucky Merton’.
Photos posted to the CleanUpMerton Twitter account show black rubbish sacks, illegal dump waste and general litter plaguing streets in the London borough.
Merton is the first of four councils in the South London Waste Partnership - Merton, Croydon, Kingston and Sutton - to make a decision to exit the contract.
But Liberal Democrat Councillor and Leader of the Opposition at Merton Council Anthony Fairclough says Veolia now has less incentive to perform its rubbish collection duties because it knows the contract is up in three years’ time.
“Veolia has consistently failed to meet the standards of street cleaning [already],” he told the Standard.
“Veolia is responsible for clearing fly tips and has a timeframe in which it’s responsible, they have often been very very bad at doing this.
“There are many blocks of flats where the collection of your bins just don’t happen, or happen intermittently.”
But Councillor and Cabinet Member Natasha Irons dismissed fears that Veolia would neglect its duties and rubbish would pile up on streets.
“We’re in a good place to get through the next three years because we’ve been very clear with the contractor about what we expect from them,” she told the Standard.
“We’ve got them to look at the scheduling of the sweep cleaning, to increase the amount of street sweepers we have, and make sure they’re putting green sacks in the right places.”
A week ago we did a litter pick here in Haydon's Road and left this spotless. Sadly we are no match for Labour run #MuckyMerton. pic.twitter.com/Hs8IsfWyHA
— 🔶 Abbey Ward Liberal Democrats 🔶 (@LibAbbey) October 5, 2022
Ms Irons said the council could not leave the contract early with Veolia due to costs and “legal back and forth”.
She denied there was an issue with clearing away fly tipping.
“They were pretty good and clearing [fly tips] over 24 hours. We’ve had over 16,000 fly tips in the last year so it’s a massive task to deal with that, and the contractor did deal well to that challenge.”
She said the council issued Veolia with an improvement notice in February and the company created action plan off the back of that, which will be worked through in the coming years.
A public consultation will be held on what the new waste collection and street cleaning service should entail.
Ms Irons said everything is on the table, including moving the service back in-house rather than signing on with a new contractor.
“We haven’t decided what he new service will look like. We’ve got every option on the table. We’re not sure if we’re going to bring it in, recontract it, look at other options.”
Mr Fairclough said the council needs to look at rubbish collection in other parts of London.
“Richmond uses Veolia but it doesn’t seem to have the same problems with street cleaning as we do, for example, but that’s because they didn’t move to fortnightly collections, and still have weekly street sweepings, which we don’t have.
“So we need to be looking at what works elsewhere and around the country.”
Veolia did not comment on Tuesday, but in an earlier statement said: “We are proud of the significant achievements that have been made since 2017 which have seen all four SLWP boroughs close to the top of the league table for the best recyclers in London.
“Our essential waste collection and street cleaning services have been delivered through Covid-19 lockdowns and extreme weather conditions and we thank our frontline staff for their ongoing hard work and commitment.
“Since the existing contract began in 2017, service requirements and the wider market have evolved substantially. We look forward to reviewing new contract specifications when these are available and will respond accordingly in the new bidding process.
“In the meantime, we are committed to continuing to deliver the best quality services to residents until the completion of the contract in 2025.”
