Specialist bulky waste clearance business, AnyJunk, has announced its withdrawal from the Improvement and Efficiency South East (iESE) waste management services framework.
The company was one of 11 suppliers welcomed into the first ever procurement framework for the waste management sector. The framework was set up in order for councils in the West Midlands, Southern England and London to tender their contracts for recycling and waste collection, street cleansing, grounds maintenance and bulky waste collection without having to carry out a full procurement process.
AnyJunk had been successful in its tender for ‘Lot 5’ of the framework covering bulky waste but decided to pull out of the framework after finding the framework’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ contract structure and pricing mechanism ‘restrict[ed] rather than encourage[d] innovation in council bulky waste collection’.
AnyJunk’s Managing Director Jason Mohr told Resource: “We were delighted to have got through pre-qualification to tender, but as the process went on, I found the pricing structure that underpinned the framework was quite simplistic in terms of what is assumed a service provider would do, probably because it was trying to cover several disciplines… I also thought the general spec of [iESE’s] questions around bulky waste seemed to not be particularly up-to-speed.”
The lack of ‘innovation’ for the framework contract was also an issue. “There are a host of things you can do in bulky waste. Reuse and recycling is a big piece of the equation and yet it wasn’t referenced at all in the iESE cost structure and the contract didn’t allow for the concept of different collection times. For example, some residents might not want to wait a week or two for their bulky waste collection, they may want it tomorrow, or on a specific date or time window, but the iESE contract didn’t allow for offering a suite of services at all”, said Mohr, adding: “It approached bulky waste with a standard operating mode.”
Mohr went on to say that though he had ‘no problem’ with the iESE people, he thought that there had been a lack of preparation in the bulky waste contract.
“I had hoped that the contracts would be very flexible and the people behind the framework would understand bulky waste better, but the further down the line I got, the less peace of mind I had. Couple that with the fact that there is an annual fee, irrespective of whether or not you get any business, and I concluded that my money could be better spent elsewhere.”
The iESE framework has nine confirmed contractors:
AmeyCespa Ltd
Cory Environmental Management Ltd
Enterprise Managed Services Limited
London Re-Use Network
Quadron Services Limited
SITA UK Limited
Urbaser LimitedVeolia Environmental Services (UK) plcFCC Environment
Further information on the iESE framework can be found on iESE’s website.
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