Newham Council is making a major change with its street and estate cleansing services by bringing them back in-house.
The landmark decision was taken by Newham’s Cabinet in November, 2020, who concluded, after extensive research, that the previous services run by three external Council owned Companies did not represent the best model or best value to deliver these services.
At an event to mark the cleansing services coming back in-house, Rokhsana Fiaz, Mayor of Newham said: “Street and estate cleaning is a crucial service that hugely impacts on the quality of life of everyone in Newham and on the image of the borough.
“When I was elected in 2018 I said that I wanted to do things differently and end the privatisation and outsourcing of council services. I’m convinced that this decision to bring our cleansing services back under full council control, will allow decisions to be made more simply and flexibly at a local level for the benefit of our residents.
“As well as saving public money, it will bring better control, allow us to develop our workers and deliver a better service. Bringing services in house is central to the Community Wealth Building that informs our Council’s values - local services run by, and for, local people.”
The Cabinet report that lead to the decision estimated that it would generate potential savings of at least £150,000 and be built into the council’s 2021/22 Medium term Financial Strategy.
The new arrangements will allow for flexibility by the council dealing with one cleansing organisation within the council’s Public Realm service rather than three separate organisations with separate tiers of management and back office functions. It will allow us to look at how we manage our streets, our cleaning regimes and what changes we can make to improve the service residents see on the streets. It is also another opportunity to look at how we manage our fleet in the future to build on our greening the fleet initiatives.
Cllr James Asser, Cabinet member for Environment, Highways and Sustainable Transport said: “We know that the cleanliness of estates is absolutely a central concern for residents and that clean streets is one of the main demands of both residents and businesses in the borough.
“Delivering that is a top priority for the Council and the current structure of three cleaning companies has not been effective or delivered the standards residents want and expect.
“We have spent the last year doing a huge of amount work behind the scenes to bring the three separately companies back together, and now, back under direct council control so that we can provide a better, more efficient service that will deliver cleaner streets in Newham.”
