The Impact of Compulsory Competitive Tendering on Refuse Collection Services

Abstract

Compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) of blue-collar services such as refuse collection and street cleaning was introduced in the UK by the Local Government Act 1988. This law, imposed by central government, obliged elected local authorities to expose specific services to competitive tendering at fixed intervals and subject to national guidelines. Whilst the issue of competitive tendering of public services has generated a substantial literature over recent years (see Domberger and Rimmer (1994) for a review), there have been relatively few studies of compulsory competitive tendering.2 This paper uses a dataset on refuse collection costs and services for the 365 English local authorities over the period 1984-94. It follows on from Szymanski and Wilkins (1993) who analysed the same database using data up until 1988