Why did a £1 million street cleaning budget saving at Wirral Council end up actually costing £875,919?
Last year, after requesting the Biffa contract during the audit, I published the part that related to street cleansing.
What Wirral Council failed to give me then were the extra pages that had varied the street cleansing part of the contract from 1st July 2013 to try to save a million pounds.
Here was what was in the original contract under minimum cleansing frequencies:
7.6 Minimum Cleansing Frequencies
7.6.1 The minimum Cleansing frequencies required by the Council at each location shall be in accordance with that outlined below and the appropriate zoning allocation.
| Zone | Frequency | |
|---|---|---|
| Manual | Mechanical | |
| 1 | Daily | Weekly |
| 2 | Weekly | Fortnightly |
| 3 | Monthly | Monthly |
| 4 | Monthly | Quarterly |
The alleyways were (before July 2013) being cleaned every four weeks as detailed in this part of the contract: