We asked SHDC your questions about the end of the FCC contract

As South Hams District Council announced last week that that they had ended their contract with FCC Environment, you had questions. So we asked them for you. 

SHDC announced last week that they had ended their contract with the waste company FCC Environment, following a litany of problems from trucks that don't fit down the lanes, drivers not being familiar with the routes and thousands of households waste collections being missed. 

As the news broke, the most popular comment among South Hams residents was "about time", but many others raised questions concerning details about the ending of the contract. 

So we took the most repeated questions, as well as the most important, and put them to SHDC. We got some answers back. 

We asked the council if it was intending to keep the waste contract in house or if there are any plans to outsource it again. A spokesperson said: "The intention as per the Council’s decision is to bring the services back in house."

We also asked them if there was a financial (or similar) pay off to FCC Environment for ending their contract? They said they were "unable to answer this question at this time" but confirmed that the new vehicles that were purchased were owned by SHDC. 

The spokesperson also confirmed that the council is "still committed to rolling out the Devon Aligned service [the boxes rather than the bags] to all residents who currently don’t have the full recycling service". But they couldn't give us a timescale for that, saying: "We will keep our residents informed through our website and updates".

Another major concern of residents is the time spent separating recycling to see all the bags being thrown into one truck on the collections. South Hams District Council's spokesperson said it "can assure all residents on the co-mingled recycling collections, that your recycling is collected and goes to Chelson Meadow to be sorted and is fully recycled. Please use this link for a short video of what happens to your recycling after collection - southhams.gov.uk/waste-service-updates." 

We will keep you updated on any developments.