The Collapsing Depot Part 2 - Scrutiny Process Gagged

Three weeks ago I wrote about the saga of the chaotic bin collection changes and the problems with the Oakleigh Road Depot. I didn't think things could get worse but in Barnet that is always a foolish assumption to make. On Thursday we had a Policy and Resources Committee. One of the late additions to the agenda was a report about the problems at the Oakleigh Road Depot with a further exempt report kept secret from the public. The public report gave outline details of the problem, which in summary is that there is a massive crack in the main roadway caused by part of the site slipping down the slope on which the depot is built, and pinned the blame on Willmott Dixon. The solution is as follows and will take 6 months to undertake:

"The current remedial works proposal constitutes a contiguous piled wall, from the rear of the footpath and stretching from the gatehouse in the North and to the South of the fuel station. This piled wall will be reinforced with reinforced capping beams and ground beams. In addition, this wall will be secured by ground anchors driven to a depth of over 16 metres".

They have known about this problem from the week the depot opened and they have already had to introduce a one way traffic system at the depot to avoid driving over the massive crack. As part of the solution, vehicles will have to refuel off site at local garages to avoid unnecessary traffic around the depot fuel tank.  It will also cause some residual waste and recycling rounds to move to Saturdays, to spread traffic movements more evenly across the week. The Council will also have to suspend the winter green waste collections approximately four weeks earlier than usual and require the extension of the opening times of Summers Lane recycling and reuse centre.

What the public report didn't mention (but was in the exempt report) is that, there are plans to reduce the use of the other waste depot in Harrow with all refuse vehicle run out of Oakleigh Road. So not only do we have restrictions but they are also going to increase the number of vehicles using the depot. As part of this relocation Barnet are planning to buy the site immediately behind the depot to accommodate the additional vehicles

Under the new gagging rules residents are apparently not even allowed to submit a written comment of 100 words or less, only a question. Personally I think this is not what was agreed at the originating committee but has been "fine tuned" by officers in the updated constitution. My banned comment was as follows:

"In June 2015 Capita prepared the detailed plans for the site and commissioned site investigations as appended to the planning application.  In June 2016 Capita acted as consulting engineers on a major soil stabilisation project. Capita project managed the depot construction. The site was known to be dominated by made ground. This report seems to entire ignore Capita’s role in this project and the significant fees they have received. There are numerous questions that need to be asked as to how this problem arose. I request this committee to commission an independent investigation into why this situation has arisen".

I also asked four questions which are also banned so I have asked for the to be answered under the FOI act although any responses will of course come far to late to inform decisions made at the committee. These included:

1. Is there any risk that surface water containing fuel from vehicles can pass directly through the surface cracks and into the ground water without being capture by the oil & fuel interceptors and has the ground water been tested to see if this is happening?
2. Has the ground movement had any impact on the vehicle fuel storage tank and have any tests been undertaken to ensure there is no risk of fuel leaking from the fuel storage tank?
3. The site has one or more attenuation tanks. Has any investigation been undertaken to ensure that the integrity of these tanks has been unaffected by the ground movement?
4. There is a large culvert running under the site. Have any investigations been undertaken to ensure that the culvert has been unaffected by the ground movements?

Now some councillors may say these questions are a waste of money answering, some may say they are politically motivated but from my perspective they are really important, especially when there are residents who live literally metres away from the depot in Coppies Grove.

Given the plan is to extend into the site behind the depot adjacent to the railway line, the reason  for asking these questions is to ensure that we understand how these problems arose and make sure they don't reoccur when the site is expanded.

@BrokenBarnet had one question accepted about this at the committee meeting which was as follows:
Will Capita face any contractual penalties for failures in construction, or project management, in regard to the Depot?  and the response was "There is currently no evidence to suggest that Capita has any liability to the Council in respect of this matter".

Now this ties in with my banned comment where I set out evidence that Capita were significantly involved having carried out a detailed site investigation report back in 2015 and acting as consulting engineers to a soil stabilisation project on the site. In the committee report Capita's name isn't mentioned once yet they were heavily involved in the site investigation and knew of the problems that might cause the subsidence. In their 2015 report they noted that the site and surrounding area originally sloped to the north. However, when the site was originally developed, to create a suitable development platform, fill was imported to raise levels across the majority of the site. This "Made Ground" forms a “wedge” of fill which generally thickens to the north of the site, is up to 7 metres deep and is made up of  clay and sand plus a mixture of "oversize brick, concrete, metal, wood and plastic". They also found pieces of a sheet of asbestos, hydrocarbons and water ingress into the boreholes at quite shallow depths. Photos of the boreholes are in the report with a couple included below:

Now all of those things should have been ringing alarm bells if the site was to be used daily by a large numbers of heavy vehicles. As part of the depot development, soil stabilisation works were carried out with Capita acting as the consulting engineers.

In addition, it is important to understand that Capita were the project managers for the depot development so should have been aware of the issues of the site throughout the construction by Willmott Dixon. Barnet say there is currently no evidence that Capita have a liability to the council on this matter but I would suggest there is evidence that should at least be examined, especially if Capita are to project manage the extension of the depot.

What this also suggests is that less than 12 months after a massive and disruptive waste round reorganisation that was predicated on having two depots, one at Oakleigh Road and one in Harrow,  we now face having to review all of those rounds again, once we are back to a one depot solution, this time in the East of the Borough.

The shutting down of any debate on this is a very serious matter but Barnet seem happy that there is absolutely no public scrutiny of a critical and expensive public service. This seems to be the Barnet way and it is unacceptable.

The Politics of Bins, Rubbish and a Collapsing Depot

Last week the Environment Committee held a very full meeting under the new gagging rules. No public speakers and severe restrictions on questions. Barnet Tories have achieved what they want - no public scrutiny. The agenda was stuffed to the gunwales, two public questions on one item limited to 100 words, no opportunity to speak, same answer to both questions, yet there were so many other issues.

If you live in High Barnet you may be unhappy to learn that Barnet have agreed to give 100 resident parking permits to Barnet General Hospital for their staff to park in residents bays as the hospital's staff car park is full. Interestingly, the no public speaking rule was waived to allow someone from Royal Free Trust to speak about their plans and justify why this should go ahead. Apparently there are plans at some stage to build a multi storey car park  but they need this proposal to meet an immediate need. Labour councillors had asked for a review of the CPZ to be undertaken before these new permits were introduced to get local residents views but the Tories were keen to push it through and undertake the review once the hospital had been given the 100 permits. It also touches on a broader issue which is that many of the staff at Barnet General simply can't afford to live in Barnet and hence have to drive in from lower cost areas. This is a problem that is only going to get worse and highlights the failing in the Council's affordable housing strategy (what strategy?)

Onto another serious matter, the review of the Reduction and Recycling Plan (RRP). This is a plan Barnet were required to produce in conjunction with the GLA because of Barnet's withdrawal of the food collection service last year. It has taken a long time to get this report, and I have to say I found it very interesting. It highlights that Barnet is slipping down the rankings in recycling rates from 11th to 15th of the London boroughs with most of the lower ranking boroughs being the inner London ones.

What the independent consultants report identified was a series of options ranging from the status quo plus food waste collection to fortnightly collections of general and recycled waste.

The options also looked at the introduction of charging for green waste collection at a cost of £35 or £50 per annum, something that was mooted last year and has yet to be confirmed.

What the study did reveal was that simply adding back in a weekly food waste collection service would cost an extra £1.26 million a year. I found this somewhat surprising as the justification for its removal was a saving of just £300,000 a year. So scrapping a service which will now have to reintroduce by 2022 at the latest has cost us at least an extra million quid. This is because they have bought 16 new refuse vehicles, 4 in October and another 12 last month at a total cost of £3.2 million. However, these new vehicles cannot collect the food waste separately on the same vehicle (which is how they previously operated the service) so they will have to buy and operate a new fleet of dedicated food waste collection lorries.

What the report also shows is that the option of weekly food and recycling collections with fortnightly general waste collections (Option 3) could save over £400,000 a year and boost recycling rates from the current level of 34.6% to a respectable 48.2%. While this seems like the most sensible option, in Barnet sensible doesn't cut it. The Tory party manifesto focused on keeping weekly bin collections in spite of the fact that three quarters of English Local authorities have already moved to fortnightly (or even less frequent) collections.

This report does include the treatment costs of waste and it confirms what I said last year that anaerobic digestion of food waste will continue to be significantly cheaper than burning it with the general refuse. Interestingly, last week Barnet also published a report on the cost and savings generated by the refuse rounds reorganisation when the food waste collection ceased. That shows a net saving of just £335,000 but ignores the additional cost of waste disposal. Add that back in and the savings fall to just £50,000. That looks like an incredibly bad decision now that we know we will have to reintroduce food waste collections at a cost of £1.26 million.

When pressed as to whether Barnet will ever reinstate the food waste collection they repeated said that it was their "aim" but would be influenced by the cost of the service. Anyone listening to what was being said will be in no doubt that the food waste collection service will not be reintroduced while we have a Tory council in charge.

What caps all of these problems off is the continuing subsidence at the new Oakleigh Road depot. This is a scheme that was rushed into at great expense even though it was inadequate for our needs resulting in Barnet having to rent additional depot space from Harrow Council. Capita project managed the depot delivery at this site even though it was known for problems with subsidence. Within weeks of the depot opening cracks began to appear and the problem has simply got worse. Some cosmetic repairs were done filling in the cracks  but the problem has never gone away. At last week's meeting it was announced that the problems had become much worse over the summer and that major works were now necessary as a matter of urgency. This will need to start in November, taking six month to complete and is likely to cause significant disruption including weekend working, reduced number of vehicles at the depot and use other satellite depots. There are likely to be additional costs over and above the remedial works, such as the extra costs of renting space, paying staff to work weekends etc. but it is not clear who will be picking up the tab for these costs and as the officer said they will be "part of a commercial discussion" as to who pays. Willmott Dixon are the builders but I cannot understand why Capita who were responsible for project managing this scheme  and have been paid a large sum on top of their core contract fee, allowed this to happen and to drag on for such a long time that such serious and disruptive works are now necessary.

As ever, we will never get to the bottom of this saga as Barnet hate any form of criticism of them or their contractors.