The Climate Action, Environment and Highways Policy and Scrutiny Committee will be provided with reports on the management of waste in the City of Westminster and the progress of the council’s Public Convenience Modernisation Programme. The committee will also review its work programme for the remainder of the 2024/25 municipal year.

Recycling & Waste Strategy

This report relates to the council's legal duty to collect waste and dispose of it properly under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 ¹ and is a pre-scrutiny report on the development of a new Recycling and Waste Strategy. The current waste and recycling collection service, provided by Veolia, is due to expire in September 2027 and the report sets out how the council is preparing for that. In particular, it considers the significance of new legislation, such as the requirement to offer a garden waste collection service from March 2026, the introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), and the inclusion of emissions from waste-to-energy plants within the scope of the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS).

The report also contains information on the council’s current waste management contract with Veolia, including its cost, the volume of waste and recycling collected, and the methods used to process them. For example, the report pack says:

Approximately 180,000 tonnes of waste is collected annually by the contract although this varies in line with changes in economic activity levels and the number of residents. For understandable reasons waste levels declined significantly during covid but have strongly recovered since then. The overall long-term trend is for reducing levels of waste as consumption patterns change (fewer newspapers, addressed mail etc) and the impact of measures by business to reduce or ‘lightweight’ packaging materials. 50% of total waste is generated by businesses, 40% by residents and 10% from street cleaning operations.

The report contains a number of charts showing trends in waste management, such as the volume of bulky waste collection requests over time, and the number of bulky waste bookings made at weekends. There is also information about the Community Mobile Recycling Centre scheme, which enables residents to recycle a range of items, and the use of Lixo artificial intelligence to monitor contamination in recycling bins.

The report concludes by setting out a draft timetable for agreeing a new Recycling and Waste Strategy for the council, beginning with consultations with members, residents, and businesses between December 2024 and February 2025 and culminating in the commencement of a new contract in September 2027.

Public Conveniences Update

This report is a progress update on the council’s plans to improve the provision of public conveniences in Westminster, as set out in the council’s manifesto commitment to “Keep Westminster’s streets clean”². This will involve refreshing neighbourhood public conveniences, refurbishing West End public conveniences, and replacing Automated Public Conveniences (APCs) and urinals. The report details the updated designs and materials, the inclusion of a Changing Places toilet at Jubilee Hall, and the installation of card payment systems.

The report notes that the estimated cost of the refurbishment project has increased from £6.5m to £12.7m, due to the initial budget being an estimate and the revised figure being based on RIBA stage 2 analysis. The report states that:

This means that £6.2m of extra capital funding will be requested for 25/26.

The report states that, following the installation of data counters at a number of sites in 2023, an analysis of visitor numbers and the number of paying users has revealed that:

between 42% (Parliament Street) and 72% (Green Park) of users pay to use public conveniences.

The report concludes by listing a number of sites that are due to benefit from new toilet facilities, including Regency Place, Balderton Street, Soho Square, Tachbrook Street, and Adelaide Street.

2024/2025 Work Programme

The final item on the agenda is a report on the committee’s work programme for the remainder of the 2024/25 municipal year. The report notes that the committee is due to meet twice more before the end of the municipal year, on Monday 3 February 2025 and Thursday 6 March 2025. It also lists the items that are provisionally scheduled to be discussed at those meetings, which are a report on the council's progress in becoming a net-zero organisation by 2030 at the March meeting and a review of the shortlist of options for the Pimlico District Heating Undertaking (PDHU) at the February meeting.