Civic leaders in West Sussex have named a temporary successor for their troubled waste collection service.

The Verdant Group will take over rubbish collections and street cleaning in the Arun district for 19 months from June.

The decision to award the Kent-based firm the contract was taken at a full meeting of Arun District Council last night.

It will run until January 2005 and will give the authority breathing space to review its overall waste strategy.

The service was thrown into crisis in February when Onyx UK Ltd pulled out out of its contract with Arun eight years early. The company blamed "unsustainable losses".

Since then the council has been racing against time to organise a new collection service before the contract ends on June 27.

Services director Colin Rogers said: "The Verdant Group presented the best option to the council in terms of quality and we look forward to working with them from the end of June.

"The important thing now is to reassure the Onyx employees that there will be no loss of terms under Verdant.

"The workforce has concerns and that is understandable. We are having a meeting with Verdant this afternoon and that is one of the things we will be discussing."

Gary Smith from the GMB union, which represents the majority of the workforce, said members would be seeking a meeting with Vedant and the council as soon as possible.

Mr Rogers also sought to reassure residents that a regular refuse collection would continue in the Littlehampton, Bognor Regis and Arundel areas during the changeover.

He said: "We will try to make the transition as seamless as possible."

Councillors at last night's meeting were told that a 19-month contract would give them sufficient time to undertake policy reviews of the current services and look at how the service should be managed in the future.