District Matters

123+ Waste Collection

March 2023

Cllr Tony Jefferson, Leader of Stratford-on-Avon District Council

We are now some seven months into the 123+ waste collection system and the results are looking really good. We are currently 13th out of 360 local authorities in the English league table of recycling according to the data from Lets Recycle. Falling residual waste figures mean that less is going to landfill. Our figures are well below the target set by Government. It is wort stressing that any waste sent to landfill that rots produces methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas. So, we are making a significant contribution to achieving ‘net zero'.

Greater numbers of residents are using food caddies which reduces waste going to landfill. Many people were sceptical about the introduction of the food waste collection service, but we anticipated the Government making it mandatory. This is exactly what it has now done - it will be mandatory by 2025. Our anticipation of what was blindingly obvious has put us ahead of most other authorities. I suspect that, as most authorities will now have to introduce the service in a very short window, it will cost them more than it has cost us because we were early adopters.

This willingness to think strategically also applies to our decision to collaborate with seven other authorities, in investment in the world class material recycling facility. The total cost of this is about £60million; our share is about £8 million. This will start operation in June/July and be fully operational in September. Because it is state of the art, the recyclate at the end of the process is cleaner and of higher quality. This means that we receive a premium price which translates into a lower cost for the District Council.

This clearly demonstrates the big advantage of thinking strategically and being prepared to take bold decisions. These two decisions combined give us a ‘future proofed' waste service that is very cost effective and makes a significant contribution to ‘net zero'. These two decisions will together lever three benefits; that's the effective way to do things.

Regular readers will know that one of my frequent comments is about the extremely poor performance of the UK economy over the past 15 years. Rather than sit around waiting for ‘someone to do something', we have taken initiatives locally. Together with the CWLEP Growth Hub and the University of Warwick, on 17 February we held a ‘Driving Innovation and Growth Summit' at the newly named University of Warwick Innovation Campus Stratford-upon-Avon. The time and effort we have spent building close working relationships with both organisations is paying off.

We invited 80 people of whom more than 60 attended. It was an excellent half day with presentations from three local innovative and growth companies:

• Petshop UK; Adam Taylor
• HERU; Nik Spencer
• Porterbrook; Ben Ackroyd

There were then three breakout sessions addressing the most pressing issues facing companies that want to grow:

• Skills - getting the right skills is not always easy
• Scaling up – rapid growth brings many challenges
• Finance – often a major challenge for smaller companies

The scaling up session led by Irene Graham, CEO of the ScaleUp Institute, was fascinating. Scale ups are defined as those businesses growing around 20% p.a. in turnover and employing more than 10 people. There are about 140 scale ups in the SDC area. So, we offer a thriving scale up opportunity, and to fully capitalise on it we need to do more. Critical will be:

• A need to share knowledge, build clusters and leverage what works
• Innovation is a key predictor of scale up growth. There needs to be greater local collaboration to maximise this.

There were two specific actions for the District Council arising out of the Innovation and Growth Summit:

• We need to set up a roundtable on business development and growth
• We need to hold follow up sessions on key themes during the rest of this year, and beyond.

We are very committed to these actions and will continue to work closely with the University and the Growth Hub to deliver what is required.

It is fair to say that the event exceeded our expectations. It demonstrates what can be achieved if people are prepared to commit to doing things, fully use the networks we have developed and to work hard to make things a success.

Our first priority is to focus on scale ups, using the knowledge and expertise of the ScaleUp Institute.

We have tremendous opportunities in our District. We need to capitalise on them fully to ensure that, regardless of the challenges our country faces, we remain thriving and prosperous for the long term.