Members considered three potential options to deliver the council’s street scene services. The services include recycling and waste, street cleansing and green space maintenance.

They agreed to remove outsourcing to a private company from the list of three options. They also approved the transfer of the Green Spaces development team to the council’s commissioning group to help deliver the Parks and Open Spaces Strategy and its capital investment to improve the borough’s green spaces.

Officers were asked to come back to Environment Committee in May with further work into future options to deliver high quality street scene services to residents and businesses.

The council will now therefore be looking at the following three options; running the service by The Barnet Group* with staff still employed Barnet Council,  all street scene staff transferred to Barnet Group  and a reformed fully in-house model.

The options will all include ways to deliver the services £3.9million saving target and deliver its objectives to:

• re-use, recycle, or compost 50 per cent of all waste the council collects
• provide services to residents and businesses that are cost effective, easy to use, and help people do the right thing
• keep Barnet clean and green
• support a thriving local economy
• get investment in public spaces
• be financially sustainable
• build stronger local communities

Councillor Dean Cohen, Chairman of Environment Committee, said: “Environment committee last night decided against pursuing outsourcing of our street scene services to a private company.

“This means our remaining options are for the service to be run in part or whole by the Barnet Group, which is wholly owned by the council, or for the service to be run in-house. I’ve asked officers to do some further work to explore the best option.

“Whichever option we decide, I am pleased that all staff will remain within the Barnet family.

“We know our street scene services are popular with our residents, but we need to recycle more, improve our green spaces and make our town centres clean, attractive and inviting to visitors. Whilst doing this we also need to make significant savings. The only way we can do this is to improve our approach, making best use of technology and challenging ourselves to make our street scene service as efficient, effective and economic as possible.”

A report will come back to Environment Committee in May.

*The Barnet Group is a company wholly owned by Barnet Council which currently has an interim management arrangement to run the service