Cllr Karen Lucioni’s portfolio includes waste management, licensing, trading standards, environmental health, policing and community safety, as well as the fire and rescue service and Emergency Management Team. Cllr Lucioni shares her update on all those areas
Read and contribute to the 10 readers’ comments ↓
As we are approaching half-way through the term of the Alliance Group’s time in office at County Hall, News OnTheWight approached each of the Cabinet members offering an opportunity to highlight the work of their portfolio and their hopes for the coming year.
We began with Isle of Wight council leader, Lora Peacey-Wilcox, followed by Cllr Jonathan Bacon, Cllr Julie Jones-Evans and Cllr Debbie Andre,
Up Next is Cllr Karen Lucioni, whose portfolio covers Community Protection, Regulatory Services and Waste. In her own words. Ed
Our environmental services, including waste and recycling are dedicated to delivering a better place to live work and play through protecting and enhancing our environment and providing clean environments for people to enjoy.
Thank you to everyone in the community who have made us an Island of recyclers!
Successful year
Thanks to the dedication of residents and hard work of our bin crews, recycling centre staff and waste workers at Forest Park, the Island continues to be a top recycler nationally.
Our state of the art recycling separation plant on Forest Road is continuing to achieve high recovery rates for all types of plastic, metals, glass, paper, card and tetra packs.
New energy from waste plant
Looking forward, 2023 will be an exciting year, as the commissioning of our new energy from waste plant draws to a close and we hope by spring to be announcing it has passed all handover testing.
The plant is operational and working really well, we are making sure it is tested end to end before it reaches its handover certification.
Get in touch with any issues
Our excellent waste contract management team at the council is there for you as a community should you have any issues.
You can get in touch through the new waste and recycling pages on the council’s beta Website or by calling 823 777.
Share your views
As a commitment to our community, the recycling and waste annual customer satisfaction survey is open.
Please do let us know what we are doing well and what we could do better to support you and our aspiration for zero non-essential waste to landfill.
Garden waste subscriptions
For our green-fingered community, the annual Garden waste subscriptions will be open for renewals in January and for new customer to join in February.
This brilliant service takes the hard work out dealing with your garden waste.
Fly tip task and finish group
I will be reigniting the fly tip task and finish group this spring to ensure that we as a council know the numbers and have a strong environmental action plan to tackle litter and fly tip on our beautiful Island.
I want to hear from the community about your ideas and thoughts, our fly tip level may be low, but I believe we can work together to prevent fly tip blighting our countryside and communities.
Work undertaken in 2022
On to regulatory services and highlights on some work undertaken.
Licensing
Trading Standards
Environmental Health
Community Safety
Policing
I represent the Isle of Wight on the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Panel which is held at Hampshire County Council, questioning on many issues like the 101 service, police visibility, a value for money service.
I have regular meetings with the Commissioner, Superintendent and the Island’s police team.
I will continue to hold the PCC to account. The commissioner’s annual report can be found online.
Many projects on our Island have been awarded substantial funding from the PCC office and ranges from small grass roots projects, to larger schemes like victim support, youth probation team and early intervention and restorative justice.
Fire and Rescue Service
I also represent the Island on Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire Authority, and I’m very pleased to say that we have had £2.5 million invested back into our fire stations, along with new specialist appliances.
I am so very proud of the work our service do at grass roots with fire cadets, Prince’s Trust, school education and groups like brownies, scouts etc by championing fire prevention and education. I am blown away by the impact these projects have on our young people. My thanks to all involved.
We are also looking for people to join the fire service full time or on call (retained) take a look on the Website if you are interested, its a great team on the Island.
Emergency Management Team
Throughout 2022 our Emergency Management Team continued to operate at a strategic and tactical level, to ensure that the Council fully discharges the statutory duties under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and that individual Council service areas can deliver a response at the operational level.
In 2022 the Team experienced a significant increase in responses to adverse weather incidents; storms and gales, flooding and extremes of temperatures, including prolonged heatwaves.
The Team achieved the aim of catching up on work not undertaken during the response to Covid, this included an extensive training and exercising programme involving Council Staff, multi-agency partners, the Voluntary Sector and transport and utility providers.
Working in the background to ensure resilience
This programme included the validation of plans for responding to adverse weather incidents and those to be used in the event of a response requiring the evacuation and shelter of Island residents. Further training and exercising will be delivered in 2023 against a range of scenarios.
This is a department the public rarely witnesses, however is always working to ensure all our safety and the Island resilience.
I know we have challenging times ahead, my door is always open to listen and engage on issues that we can work on together, my email address is [email protected] and contact number is 07506 930 109.
Happy new year to everyone.
Monday, 2nd January, 2023 2:48pm
By Karen Lucioni
ShortURL: http://wig.ht/2pLJ
Filed under: Featured, Island-wide, Isle of Wight Council, Isle of Wight News
Colin
2.Jan.2023 3:54pm
So the waste plant is only four years behind schedule. I wonder where the budget is?
Benny C
2.Jan.2023 5:40pm
Yep that should have been addressed for sure. There’s merit in openness when things don’t go to plan,bad long as there is a route to the future.
At least we have some performance measures though. Well done for that. Sadly no stats at all on waste management, which should be easy to do. What does a top recycler mean comparatively and where are the year on year stats, if they’re worse than 2021 what is the plan to improve 2023? It’s not tough to write something that voters might actually engage with, this is a decent start I guess.
kareniow28
2.Jan.2023 5:55pm
Recylcing at 56.76 per cent
Diversion of all waste from landfill 99.69 per cent
Reporting comes 2 months after the fact as it takes time to reconcile weigh tickets against processed recy ling tonnages
So we are exceeding our contractual targets and the national targets for
50 per cent recycling by 2020, and
90 per cent diversion from landfill by 2025
kareniow28
2.Jan.2023 6:14pm
Was supposed to be 2035 …. Apologies
kareniow28
2.Jan.2023 5:47pm
Thank you for your question which I should have addressed
As per the expertly negotiated contract delivered by our now strategic manger for Environment, all costs of delay are the service providers risk. There is no additional cost to the council.
kareniow28
2.Jan.2023 5:56pm
Next figures coming in feb/march
Colin
2.Jan.2023 7:05pm
Thanks for engaging with us on here, Karen.
The council has always hidden behind commercial confidentiality on this project so it’s always difficult to get to the facts. As I understood it, Amey is only building and managing the Forest Road Waste Plant. There has already been one major change in the burner system and the newer system was a different spec. The IWC has ownership of the entire plant so that should Amey be replaced as management provider in the future then the council retains the asset. Whilst the cost of Amey providing the services may remain as per contract, surely the cost of the tangible assets will have increased. The original contact spec had replacements for some parts which had an estimated lifespan of 10 years so certain consumables with a ten year life span would have to be replaced at least twice over the period of the 25 year contract and the cost of this was in the contract. Nobody ever publically divulged the cost difference between the system that was tendered for and the system currently being built. Many years ago there was a figure of around £36 million bandied about for the build cost of the original plant before contracts were awarded; I understand that the build cost of the current plant to be around £57 million.
A little more openess on what costs the council are incurring would be interesting. (a bit like the floating bridge)
Or is it that there is so much leeway in the 25 year contract of £225 million for the entire waste services that there is plenty of our money sloshing around for foul-ups? I did note that when Amey decided to restructure itself that the IW contract was kept on. I wonder why?
kareniow28
2.Jan.2023 7:22pm
I will get you a response in the next days …. Thank you for engaging with me too 🙂
chartman
2.Jan.2023 5:57pm
Trading standards a waste of space- been chasing them for 2 years re rogue trader- nothing happening!
kareniow28
2.Jan.2023 6:15pm
Can you email me some details please on [email protected]
Will look into it ….. 🙂
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