After 18 months of missed collections running at three times target rates, Wandsworth Council is finally bringing its waste service under control – but information pulled out of the council reveals it took no formal enforcement action against contractor Serco despite councillors strongly implying otherwise.
The borough is now hitting collection targets for the first time since the troubled service launched in June 2024. September and October both achieved the industry-standard 70 missed collections per 100,000, ending months of resident frustration.
But the route to improvement raises serious questions about accountability. Documents obtained under FOI show that despite public promises of “relentless pursuit” of the contractor, the council issued zero warning letters, zero performance improvement notices, and zero breach notices against Serco.
Instead, the council fixed the crisis through intensive operational management – hiring five monitoring officers, implementing daily oversight meetings, and introducing sophisticated tracking systems.
The larger question is: why did it take 18 months to implement basic monitoring that’s delivering results? And if the council had contractual enforcement powers, why weren’t they used?
The crisis timeline
When Wandsworth launched its new annual waste contract with Serco in June 2024, missed collections quickly spiralled out of control. By autumn 2024, the rate had hit nearly three times the council’s target of 70 per 100,000 collections.
The borough’s recycling rate stagnated at 29% – well below the London average of 33% and dramatically behind neighbouring boroughs like Bexley (52%) and Kingston (49%).
Most strikingly, Richmond achieves 41% recycling despite sharing the same Serco contractor and the same joint contract – a 12 percentage point gap suggesting Wandsworth’s problems stemmed from council management rather than contractor capability alone.
Throughout this period, council officials made strong public statements about accountability. Committee papers referenced “financial penalties” and “monthly performance reviews.” Councillors spoke of holding Serco to account.
What FOI revealed
When Putney.news requested details of enforcement action in June 2025, the council’s response was stark.
“No formal enforcement action has taken place,” the FOI response stated. “Senior Directors from the Council and from Serco have met to discuss the new services.”
The council had issued:
- Zero warning letters
- Zero performance improvement notices
- Zero breach notices
- Zero escalation measures
Only meetings “to discuss how the parties can work together.”
When the same FOI request asked for details of financial penalties, the council initially refused to disclose them, citing commercial confidentiality. Only after persistent follow-up requests over five months did the council reveal the penalty amounts.
The penalty pattern
The disclosed figures show Serco was fined a total of £43,682.45 between October 2024 and October 2025.
But the penalty timeline raises questions:
The contract started in June 2024, but penalties didn’t begin until October 2024 – a three-month grace period during which missed collections were running at crisis levels.
Penalties peaked in January 2025 at £6,770.22 for the month.
By October 2025, monthly penalties had dropped 92% to just £534.61 – despite missed collections in September still running at 68 per 100,000, barely hitting the target.
The council has not explained whether the declining penalties reflect improved performance, changed penalty criteria, or reduced monitoring intensity.
What finally worked
The council’s November 2025 papers reveal extensive operational improvements implemented throughout 2025, representing a comprehensive overhaul of how the service is managed.
The council significantly increased its monitoring capacity, hiring two new Monitoring Officers in May 2025 to expand the team to five people. A new Senior Monitoring Officer role was created in July 2025 to provide strategic oversight. Officers were assigned to specific geographic areas across the borough, and they now accompany waste collection crews on particularly affected rounds to identify problems in real time.
Supervision was expanded across the board. The council instituted daily contract review meetings when the new service launched, moving to crew-specific performance tracking that enabled targeted interventions on problematic routes. Supervision was increased on the worst-performing rounds, with additional oversight deployed whenever regular crew members were off sick to prevent service degradation.
New technology improved the council’s ability to monitor performance. In-cab Whitespace devices were installed in all vehicles, providing real-time monitoring of collection progress. Serco appointed a designated Whitespace controller to review reports as they came in, while the system automatically flagged properties that experienced two or more missed collections within six weeks. Improved exception logging helped identify false reports, preventing crews from being sent to addresses where waste had been collected or presented incorrectly.
Process improvements tackled systemic issues. Annual leave was staggered across crews to prevent simultaneous absences that had previously left routes understaffed. The reporting webpage was enhanced to reduce duplicate reports, while letters and visits were deployed to properties with persistent late waste presentation. Supervisor checklists were created for repeatedly affected properties, ensuring these locations received particular attention during collections.
The results are clear. After months of failure, missed collections dropped to 79.66 per 100,000 in Q2 2025, then hit the industry-standard 70 target in both September (68 per 100,000) and October (69 per 100,000).
The unanswered questions
The improvements are real. The data shows the service is finally stabilising. But several questions remain:
Why no formal enforcement?
The council had contractual powers to issue warnings, improvement notices, and breach notices. These were not used. If informal meetings were sufficient, what purpose do formal contract enforcement mechanisms serve?
Why 18 months?
The monitoring officers who are now delivering results weren’t hired until May 2025 – 11 months after the crisis began. The tracking systems now working effectively weren’t implemented until well into 2025. Why weren’t these basics in place from the contract start?
The Richmond comparison
Richmond and Wandsworth share the same contractor and the same joint contract. Yet Richmond achieves 41% recycling versus Wandsworth’s 29%. What does Richmond do differently in managing the same contractor?
Declining penalties
Penalties dropped 92% from January to October 2025 while performance improvement was marginal. Did the council change penalty criteria? Reduce monitoring? Or did Serco genuinely improve performance while still barely hitting targets?
The transparency problem
The council initially refused to disclose penalty amounts, claiming commercial confidentiality. Only persistent FOI requests forced disclosure. What else isn’t being disclosed about contractor performance?
The bigger picture
Wandsworth Council has ultimately fixed its bin crisis. Five monitoring officers, daily oversight meetings, and sophisticated tracking systems now deliver the service residents expected from day one.
But the 18-month journey reveals a troubling pattern: a council that chose intensive operational hand-holding over formal contract enforcement, gave its contractor a three-month grace period while collections collapsed, then watched penalties decline 92% while performance remained barely adequate.
Most telling is the Richmond comparison. The same contractor, on the same joint contract, performs significantly better – suggesting Wandsworth’s crisis was about council management capability rather than contractor failure.
The bins are finally being collected on time. The systems are working. But residents who endured 18 months of uncollected rubbish are entitled to ask: why did the council have to learn these lessons while paying more than £10 million annually for a service that should have worked from the start?
And when the next contract crisis emerges, will the council use its formal enforcement powers – or will residents face another year of meetings “to discuss how the parties can work together”?
TIMELINE:
- June 2024: New Serco contract launches, missed collections spike
- Oct 2024: First penalties issued (after 3-month grace period)
- Jan 2025: Penalties peak at £6,770.22/month
- May 2025: Two new Monitoring Officers hired
- July 2025: Senior Monitoring Officer role created
- Sept 2025: Target achieved for first time (68 per 100,000)
- Oct 2025: Target maintained (69 per 100,000), penalties down to £534.61/month
- Nov 2025: Council reports comprehensive improvement programme
Just on the subject of recycling, it is much easier for people who live in houses to recycle waste than for people who live in flats, where they may have much less room to put recycling bags, as well as keeping other things that need to be recycled separately, such as plastic film, batteries, light bulbs and water filter cartridges. The difference between Richmond and Wandsworth may be in part due to different proportions of house and flat occupancy – it would be interesting to see the statistics.