Waste feeds on waste in councils
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TIME-AND-MOTION officers in local government who devise refuse-collections schedules are often taken for a ride, says Maurice Weaver, of The Daily Telegraph. He quotes Richard Barlow, managing director of Executive Cleaning Services, which has made 70 studies of the feasibility of handing over public cleansing to private enterprise, as believing that officials "who set workloads in the past were hopelessly misled".
Maurice Weaver calculates if all refuse collection and disposal were put out to contract, ratepayers would be saved more than £100 million a year. In some areas, particularly those controlled by Labour, contractors believe that they could reduce cost by up to 40 per cent.
No wonder the public service unions, as custodians of waste, howl with rage at any suggestion of more efficient methods.