More than a third of refuse site workers across the four boroughs involved in the South London Waste Partnership have been subject to official disciplinary action, a report has shown.

A total of 36 out of 96 operational staff at SLWP’s household reuse and recycling centre have been through some sort of disciplinary process since Kingston Council took back the service from Environmental Waste Controls (EWC) in July 2013.

The dumps run by the contract are Factory Lane, Fisher's Farm and Purley Oaks, all in Croydon, Villiers Road in Kingston, Garth Road in Merton and Kimpton Park Way in Sutton.

There have been 14 dismissals, three final written warnings, 17 improvement notices, one resignation and one long term sickness case that ended in a settlement.

Problems include staff management, staff supervision, inherited and on-going disciplinaries, site safety, site infrastructure and regulatory compliance.

Councillor David Cunningham, Kingston Council’s lead member for environment and transport and SLWP vice chairman, declined to give reasons for the disciplinary actions.

He said: "You will appreciate that disciplinary cases are and must remain confidential.

"To do otherwise would be most unfair to the parties involved and I therefore regret that I cannot give any further information over and above what is set out in the report."

The report, to be heard at a SLWP meeting tonight at 5.30pm in Croydon Town Hall, also reveals that Kingston Council has had to manage “numerous challenges” since bringing the service back 'in-house'.

A section of the report accidentally leaked online reveals EWC 'removed' from the contract in July 2013 after months of 'poor service' at the same time as it was appointing administrators over financial difficulties.

EWC,  the SLWP and a sub-contractor DHL were also caught up in a BBC Panorama investigation 'Track My Trash' in May 2011 when the news programme revealed TV sets dumped at Merton and Croydon were on their way to Africa in breach of environmental regulations. 

Kingston Council has also restructured the service since August 2014 which the report said had been successful apart from a trade dispute and Croydon's Purley Oaks site.

Councillors will be asked tonight to approve international waste giant Veolia as its preferred bidder for a seven year contract beginning in October.

Sita UK would be a 'back-up' reserved bidder.

Bids by Countrystyle Recycling and Viridor, which is working on an incinerator for the SLWP, were not progressed and Biffa pulled out, citing other work elsewhere.

The leaked report shows the 'scores' for each of the company's bids and how much they had bid. 

The SLWP's 'risk register' which details potential threats to the contract and potential mitigations, said that there was a small risk that a third party could challenge Kingston running the contract.

But it said that the councils' actions could be defended by EWC's then financial position and risk of insolvency.