Agenda and minutes

Apologies received from Councillor Law (Canterbury).

TO RECEIVE any other apologies for absence.

Apologies received from Councillor Law (Canterbury), Councillor Latchford (Thanet), Councillor Scales (Dover) and Councillor King (Kent County Council).

TO RECEIVE declaration of interests

No declarations were received.

The Chairman to report any notifications received prior to this meeting regarding the attendance of substitutes for the named Members of this Committee.

It was confirmed that Councillor Doyle was substituting for Councillor Law and Councillor Ward was substituting for Councillor Scales

To confirm as a true record the minutes of the meeting of the East Kent (Joint Arrangements) Committee held on 8 April 2009.

There were no actions arising from the previous meeting.

TO CONSIDER a report of the Director of Environmental Services, Thanet District Council on behalf of East Kent Waste Management Group.

The Director of Environmental Services, Thanet District Council, introduced the report.  He said if approved, then the report would be recommended to each of the participating authorities for formal resolution.  He said the financial modelling had been the subject of detailed discussions between the county and the four district authorities over a period of time.  He said the modelling was now assisting Shepway and Dover with their joint tender, which was currently at the competitive dialogue phase.  He said the project group was seeing some interesting responses from the contractors, who would look to further improve the agreed modelling, where it was in the interests of all parties.

He said the report included a memorandum of understanding, which provided the basis for developing a legally binding agreement.  The key to this was the requirement to commit to the notional operating model collection methodology, as refined and informed by the competitive dialogue process.  He drew attention to the six key areas of the agreement set out in section 2.14 of the report.

He said the project had generated a lot of interest elsewhere in the county and nationally.  He said the learning from the East Kent project would be able to be applied elsewhere.

A Member asked whether the contract had sufficient flexibility to respond to changes in government legislation on matters such as recycling credits.  Also would the plant and equipment procured be adaptable in the way it was used to best fit any new arrangements? – It was confirmed that contractors were looking at a number of innovative solutions as part of the competitive dialogue phase, some of which were anticipating possible changes in legislation and responding to technological advances.  It was confirmed that the tender programme was sufficiently flexible as to encourage contractors to come up with innovative proposals.

RESOLVED –

That Partner Authorities to seek approval from their respective authorities to commit to the East Kent Joint Waste Project (EKJWP) as set out in this report, and to:

1.      Agree to take forward the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) attached at Annex 1 through their individual Councils decision making bodies.

2.      Delegate authority to the senior legal officer of each authority to prepare and complete a legally binding agreement incorporating the requirements set out in Appendix II to the MoU, with the agreement being to the satisfaction of the senior legal officer in each authority.

3.      Delegate authority to the senior officer for waste management in each authority to take all the steps necessary to facilitate the East Kent Joint Waste Project up to each partner authority agreeing to enter into a formal partnership agreement based on the memorandum of understanding.

To address the position of Ashford Borough Council in relation to this committee on the question of the Joint Housing Landlord Service

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services, Canterbury City Council, reminded the committee that they had temporarily co-opted two members of Ashford Borough Council onto the committee for the purposes of the joint housing landlord services project.  He said the item had been included on the agenda in order to renew the arrangement.  He said as the housing case has developed, it had become apparent that the financial advantages for Ashford were not as great as those for the East Kent authorities and as a result, they had now withdrawn from the project.  He said the opportunities for the four East Kent authorities still looked positive and he anticipated a report coming forward to the joint committee in the near future.

The committee noted the officers’ comments.

There being no other business the meeting closed at 10.24 am