Contract process starts for Wirral recycling, waste & street cleaning

The next step for Wirral Council appointing a contractor to operate its Recycling, Waste and Street Cleansing service from August 2027 has been reached today with the publishing of ‘Invitation to Tender’ documents.

The current contract for the service with Biffa comes to an end in August 2027 with no further option to extend which means the process is underway to find a suitable provider to run the service for at least eight years after the current contract expires.

Published on The Chest, which is the Procurement Portal for public sector authorities in the north-west to link them with appropriate suppliers, the Invitation to Tender will set out the scope of the new contract and ask interested parties to begin considering their bid.

Among the many ‘asks’ set out in the scope, interested suppliers will be required to deliver on the council’s new Waste Management Strategy, which is currently under consideration by members. Interested suppliers will also be required to demonstrate how they will successfully continue carrying out weekly collections of food waste, after it becomes mandatory next year.

It also describes the potential for possible changes to waste collections in the coming years. 

Some of the possible changes listed – none of which are confirmed as going ahead at this stage – include a potential requirement to collect more recycling materials, such as flexible plastics, paper and card, a possible shift towards general waste being collected three-weekly (as food waste will now have a separate weekly collection) and different ways to collect recycling, or collecting materials separately. If any of these extra recycling options are to be introduced, they would be designed to keep the overall capacity of the bins the same.

Prior to deciding how waste and street cleansing services would be delivered once the current contract expired, the council evaluated a number of different options under an outline business case which was presented to the Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee in July 2024.

Members of the committee instructed the Director of Neighbourhoods to prepare a Full Business Case focused on three potential options. The full business case was presented to the committee in January 2025 where the recommendation was to fully outsource both refuse collection and street cleansing.

Under the tender process which gets underway today, interested parties are invited to view the notice and develop their response to a ‘Procurement Specific Questionnaire’. They have until July 14th to submit their response.

By October 2025, it is expected that there will be a shortlist of tenderers with whom a period of dialogue will take place.