LAWR

OPINION If recycling be the food of love, play on The Kent Resource Partnership (KRP) is on track to deliver cost savings of around £67m during a ten-year period ending in 2021. Paul Vanston explains why this joint working approach is proving to be a success. f music be the food of love, play on' was a line I learned while a student in my home city of Exeter. I prob- ably understand it better now having had 25 years practice as an adult; with greater professional emphasis, of course, on food rather than on music or love. Having a liking for numbers and word- play, I wondered how 'Twelfth Night' could be relevant to me in supporting a resource partnership of 13 councils. My thoughts went along these lines. Firstly, partners may come together 'for love or for money' as the old say- ing goes. For councils, we can prob- ably agree it's not undying love but much more the money that's of greatest mutual interest. Fully recognising this is good. It can keep initiatives like the KRP keenly aware that yesterday's achievements have been 'banked' and yet more needs to be done today for part- nerships to remain relevant tomorrow. Secondly, establishing common bonds, and continually maintaining them, is an important feature of daily work. In the case of the 13 Kent coun- cils this does not necessarily mean only 13 views on a given issue. It's probably more like 100 standpoints across councillors and colleagues and their respective roles. This is no bad thing as making sense of people's differ- ences is a key to finding solutions to satisfy many interests. Thirdly, complexity is a feature of many parts of life, but I really do enjoy my day when we can keep things simple. If the KRP can help deliver financial benefits, improved per- formance (and financial benefit), improved supply chain relation- ships (and financial benefit), influence policy (for financial benefit), and tackle long-term challenges (yes, you guessed it, for financial benefit), that would be marvellous. Keeping it simple Most of those as a 'reason for being' can be as comp lex or as simple as we wish them to be, particularly with the very talented pool of people in councils and our supply chain. That's not to say arriv- ing at the destination won't take hard work – but it does help to recognise the reason for an organisation's or project's existence should be relatively simple to define. With those thoughts in mind, the East Kent Project (comprising Canterbury City Council, Dover District Council, Shepway DC, Thanet DC and Kent County Council) and the Mid Kent Project (of Ashford Borough Council, Maidstone BC, Swale BC and Kent CC) are projected to deliver £67m, of finan- cial benefits over ten years up to 2021. From that financial benefit, some £7m has been re-invested in new bins the district councils need to give to residents to use new services. Weekly food waste collections are standard across East and Mid Kent. Collections of recyclates include plas- tic pots, tubs and trays as standard. It is now common to see district coun- cils' boundaries crossed by recycling and refuse collection vehicles operating on behalf of several councils in a joined-up contract. KRP recycling and composting per- formance for 2013/14 is set to be 46% according to provisional figures. That is some 5% points higher than the previ- ous year, at a time when the national recycling rate is reported to be flat- lining. We're well on our way towards the 2020 national target of 50% and aim to achieve it earlier. At the same time, Kent landfill has decreased from 75% a decade ago to below 18% in 2013/14. Achieving all of these financial, per- formance and supply chain benefits without a partnership approach would have been unachievable. However, I do recognise that every council area in and out of Kent has a sufficiently large plateful of challenges. So, a co-operative approach between us all is more helpful than trying to make out we're better than our next door neighbours. So perhaps the immediate attention grabber for many reading this article is how performance is being improved in Kent whilst simultaneously delivering a projected £60m net benefit – and worth adding that none of the Kent councils has had to give an inch on sovereignty or governance to a central body in securing these benefits. If that sort of message is music that whets your appetite, there are council- lors and colleagues in Kent whom are more than happy to share our experi- ences with you – and probably without a financial benefit to us in mind. Paul Vanston is manager of the Kent Resource Partnership " We're well on our way towards the 2020 national target of 50% " 10 Local Authority Waste & Recycling August 2014 'I Paul Vanston

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