Back in the day (Summer 2012) we were asked to conduct a national survey, by Defra, of local authority Business Continuity Plans and Disaster Recovery Plans for waste management services. One of the drivers would have been the developing austerity cuts and the need to ensure services are maintained for any unforeseen shock to the system. We surveyed 46 Councils and received and reviewed examples of Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) or Business Continuity Plans (BCPs).
Fast forward 8 years and I am currently organising a webinar for the CIWM Midlands and asking Councils about their lessons learned from the pandemic, and the one consistent message that has come across is the importance of Business Continuity Plans. Look out for this on CIWM channels!
So I thought I would look back and see what messages we found then and compare with what we have seen and heard now. This first entailed finding the correct CD archive, and then a laptop that had a CD drive on it in order to open it (hmm!), and a number of interesting points came across. In fact, this could easily make about 5 blogs, but here are some key points.
The structure of these BCPs / DRPs varied widely from Council to Council, we found 16 different models for this, ranging from a single council BCP (including waste elements) through to a 4 tier structure with individual service elements. The contractual arrangements with outsourced services were important elements and again there was a wide variation here regarding contingencies and contract clauses.
But let’s go straight to the topic of a pandemic. Whilst this risk area was mentioned in some BCPs, it was in most cases, considered centrally in total Council emergency plans rather than individual service plans. The service plans more commonly dealt with specific aspects of relevance such as ‘loss of staff’ and, less commonly, ‘increase in demand’ on the service. Several of these factors coming at once was seldom addressed.
In general, the waste management service was considered a “lower priority” from an emergency situation than many other Council services because the impacts upon users were less immediate and there was an ability to prioritise services. The latter point also came up in the recent survey (and as reflected in the ADEPT surveys) as Councils prioritised residual waste collections for example. Some interesting quotes from the 2012 survey:-
“Waste services are not critical relative to other LA services.”
“Services could be suspended for 2+ days and then priorities would be trade waste because it is a chargeable and contractual service.”
“All services relatively low risk and only local impacts.”
“Services were treated in terms of continuity although transfer stations and disposal functions were more important than HWRCs.”
“Only critical after 1 week.”
One aspect that has come across from the Pandemic has been the robustness of the key services albeit with massive challenges to officers, crews and contractors to deal with the staffing issues, social distancing and supply chain problems. Implicit in some of the comments above is that the BCP / DRPs are tending to consider interventions as being short term, however just because waste services can sustain short impacts and can flex resource towards the most important functions, they still require due contingency for longer term challenges like the current pandemic. A quote from an officer in 2012:
“The authorities’ contingencies aren’t adequate to withstand a prolonged and significant loss of staff, for example a pandemic”
It is a different type of contingency to more immediate challenges like social services, residential care etc. The next issue is contracts. Key aspects of the waste management service are often outsourced, this is (almost always) treatment and disposal, but may also be collection, cleansing, recycling and supporting services like waste transfer, outlets for HWRC streams and maintenance services for fleet. In these instances, the relationships, the contingency arrangements and the respective contract clauses regarding abnormal and emergency operating come into focus. Again there was a wide variety of approaches both then and now, and a good example of partnering between the public and private sector, from 2012, is quoted below.
“[the contractor provided] input into the [client] plan on Disposal – including 2 elements: the site closure contingency plan and the swine flu / pandemic disposal plan.”
An example from the current ‘lessons learned’ was the difficulty in re-opening HWRCs in terms of the contractual requirements, the additional costs, the loss of outlets for wastes / recyclables and the need to both manage access (safely) from the public and any interface with other waste management operations on the same site. A lack of clarity from Government on this service did not help either!
Councils have reported the benefits of having Business Continuity Plans / Disaster Recovery Plans or other tools (e.g. matrices of priorities) in helping to manage the challenge of Covid 19 on waste management services and I will end on a good practice example we picked up in 2012 which stands up well today. One Council had a step by step series of actions regarding a flu type pandemic, specifically considering the waste service, from the initial impacts through to the recovery phase and potential for a second wave. It included 26 steps covering hygiene, PPE, safe working practices, staff isolation, the priority services, the need to transfer staff, etc. much of which we have seen delivered across the country. I suspect they were amongst the most responsive back in March.
Paul Frith is the Director or Frith Resource Management - We provide technical support to Councils across the UK on municipal waste management services, procurement, infrastructure and modelling. Contact us on 01746 552423 or email paul@frithrm.com