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Question 2c

Beeshire Local Authority (BLA) is a local government body which provides a range of services for the area of Beeshire within the country of Seeland. Beeshire is a wealthy area within the country with many tourist attractions. One of BLA’s tasks is to ensure that waste is collected from the homes and businesses in Beeshire. The goal for BLA’s waste management department is ‘to maintain Beeshire as a safe, clean and environmentally friendly place where people and businesses want to both stay in and return to.’ The need for waste collection is linked to public health concerns, the desire to keep the streets clean and attractive and the desire to increase the amount of rubbish which is recycled.

BLA is funded through a single local tax and does not charge its residents or businesses separately for most of its services, including waste collection. There is no public or political appetite for outsourcing services such as waste management.

Waste collection is performed by the workforce using a fleet of vehicles. The waste is either taken to recycling plants or else to landfill sites for burying. BLA obtains revenues from all the recycled waste but this only just covers the cost of running the recycling facilities.

Against a background estimate that waste will increase by 1% p.a. in the future, the national government has ordered local authorities, such as BLA, to promote the recycling of waste and has set a target of 40% of all waste to be recycled by 2015. In order to discourage the creation of non-recyclable waste, the government has imposed a levy per tonne of waste buried in landfill sites and has stated that this levy will rise over the next five years in order to encourage continuing improvement in the amount of recycled waste.

Currently, Seeland is in a long recession and so local authority revenues have fallen as tax revenues reflect the poor state of the economy. Along with other local authorities, BLA has tried to cut costs and so has focused on financial measures of performance. In a recent, private meeting, the chief executive of BLA was heard to say ‘keep costs under control and we will worry about quality of service only when complaint levels build to an unacceptable level.’ As one of the area’s largest employers, cutting staff numbers has been very difficult for BLA due to the impact on the local economy and the reaction of the residents.

The current performance indicators used at BLA are drawn from the existing information systems with national figures given for comparison. Those relating to waste collection for the year ending 31 March 2014 are:

BLA National total
Total cost ($m) 250 2,850
Volume of waste
landfilled (tonnes) 1,250,000 13,750,000
recycled (tonnes) 950,000 9,500,000
total (tonnes) 2,200,000 23,250,000
No. of staff 3,500 39,900
Staff cost ($m) 110 1,190
No. of households 2,380,952 26,190,476
No. of complaints about waste uncollected 18,250 200,750
BLA National average
Frequency of waste collections (days) 14 12

Notes on BLA data:

1. Cost data and no. of households comes from BLA’s financial systems.
2. Waste data comes from weighing lorries at the landfill sites and recycling facilities.
3. Staff data is collected from BLA’s HR system.
4. Complaints data is based on numbers of letters and phone calls to the waste management department.
5. Frequency of collection data is obtained from the department’s vehicle schedules.

Required:

(c) Discuss the difficulties of measuring qualitative factors of performance, suggesting appropriate solutions for BLA. (7 marks)