Environmental Services
Our Environmental Services contract with London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham (Refuse, Recycling and Street cleaning) saves the council approximately 15% on the cost of delivering the service while at the same time delivering improvements - as compared to the previous in-house service. The contract is a 7+7 contract worth £140m over the full 14 years and started in May 2008.
- Efficiencies and service improvements have been achieved through innovations such as:
- synchronised street cleansing and collection of refuse and recycling;
- using technology to model and reduce the number of vehicle miles travelled;
- matching the new street cleansing rotation to an understanding of the patterns of street use so it can be effectively targeted;
- introduction of electric vehicles for street cleansing
- and GPS cameras provided to community champions to identify problem areas;
- communications programmes to reduce littering and other environmental issues.
- Across our contracts delivering environmental services we continually look at how we can work with the customer (we now work with 14 councils) to deliver continuing efficiencies through initiatives such as joint procurement strategies, early payment discounts, as well as efficiencies around team structures and the introduction of new technologies.
- All contracts have quarterly public satisfaction tracker surveys, where we are monitored and in some occasions have our margin at risk on public satisfaction with the services provided by Serco.
- Across our contracts we deliver added value Marketing Communications Support to deliver real improvements in the local environment
- Complete comms campaign for the introduction of food and garden waste at Milton Keynes (leaflets, roadshows, advertisements to all residents) - results was a complete understanding of the new service and excellent participation, supporting a increase in the recycling rate to 50% for the first time ever in MK
- Garden waste comms campaign at Charnwood, has led to an 8% increase in subscriptions in the space of just two months (1,250 new subscribers)
- Community Champions initiative launched in Welwyn Hatfield, Milton Keynes and Charnwood - engaging with local community volunteers by providing them with GPS-enabled PDA;s to identify and report grot spots, e.g. fly-tipping, graffiti, litter/detritus and dog fouling - this results in greater community engagements leading to more awareness and satisfaction of services provided
- Sustainability - we have introduced bio-fuels across our fleet of refuse and street cleaning vehicles, and have introduced electric vehicles on our contracts at Milton Keynes and LB Newham.