No penalty for bin contractor mess up
Contractors tasked with swapping council bins won’t be penalised despite many households being left waiting for replacements.
Stirling Council’s environment and housing convener Councillor Jim Thomson acknowledged there had been issues.
But he suggested there were technical complexities involved with punishing contractors and a danger that tenders could be skewed if businesses factored such risks into their bids.
Tory councillor Martin Earl had asked if the council had withheld payment from or levied charges against contractors who had responsibility for delivering the new comb lift style bins and gathering in the old diamond lift style grey and brown bins across the council area.
Councillor Thomson said: “Payments were not withheld or charges levied as part of this contract. Financial penalties were not put in place as this was not deemed appropriate under the terms of the contract.
“The contract specification was framed whereby the appointed contractor would minimise avoidable missed bins. Any instances of non-completion of roll in or roll out distribution rounds was the responsibility of the contractor to factor into the schedule by working closely with the council’s lead officer to reach agreement on catch up, while minimising service disruption and managing our customers’ expectations.”
Councillor Earl said, however, he was “surprised and disappointed” that penalties hadn’t been deemed appropriate given the amount of disruption there had been and the impact on collections.
“We have got to be careful,” replied Councillor Thomson. “We can’t just penalise for the sake it it. We have to prove loss and what can happen is that contractors will just frontload their prices, so we have to get the balance right.
“I know there were a number of premises missed. That was built into the contract, albeit not for as many as there were, but it was agreed there would be a ‘mop up’ session.
“I’m not going to pretend it worked as well as it should have. Promises were made to deliver bins that didn’t happen and a lot of pressure was put on the call centre and then on to the waste team.
“I do agree there should sometimes be penalties, but on this occasion I agree with the way the officers went about their business.”