The Challenge
Through the Environment and Recreation section, Portsmouth City Council is responsible for a wide range of services that have a direct impact on the lives and environment of every resident, visitor, business and organisation. These include; Household Waste Collection and Household Waste Disposal and Recycling.
For 2014-2015 key performance indicator (KPI) measures for waste and recycling include:
- A reduction in annual waste collection KPI totals of 10%
- An increase in recycling rates of at least 5% but preferably from current 23% to 30% with both environmental and financial savings in the region of £150,000 per annum
- A reduction in contamination in recycling streams to below 7%
- Reduction in the amount of residual non-recyclable waste sent to landfill of 5%
- Reduce occurrences of repeat rectifications at a single address by 50% from Year 1 average of 41
Due to the densely populated nature of the city and its aging housing stock Portsmouth offers a weekly black bag collection for domestic waste and a fortnightly binned collection for recycling. With 66,000 houses on fortnightly recycling and weekly refuse collection, and 22,000 flats receiving weekly communal collections of refuse and recycling, the Council is responsible for carrying out the equivalent of over 140,000 refuse and recycling collections each week.
The Council contracts both rubbish and recycling collections to specialist waste management company Biffa and waste disposal to Veolia Environmental Services, and employs a team of 11 client officers to manage and monitor both contracts.
The Solution
Portsmouth City Council is a long term user of Mayrise Waste Management software. The centralised management solution is used to record any issue raised by a member of the public, waste collection team member or contractor.
Customers’ issues are usually reported to the Council’s centralised call centre where they are directly logged into the Mayrise back office system. Other lines of communication include the ‘Report It’ section of the Council’s website, emails and in person complaints. All issues are recorded in Mayrise against a specific location, usually a property’s Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) from the Mayrise integrated National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) or National Street Gazetteer (NSG), and issue type; for example missed collection or street cleansing issue.
“Every incident that is reported to us is recorded in Mayrise,” commented Vincent Venus, Street Environment and Parks Manager at Portsmouth City Council, “it is given a unique reference number, its location accurately identified, time and date recorded and the nature of the complaint is logged against a list of user customisable codes. Some codes are automatically communicated to the contractor for resolution while others are allocated to the Council’s own team for further investigation.
“Using Mayrise we can estimate that around 80% of issues reported to the Council result in jobs issued to the contractor. These can include missed bins, complaints about crew behaviour and street cleansing issues resulting from waste collection. The remaining 20% require a more detailed investigation and result in a job being issued to the client team. Examples of this type of issue can include ongoing complaints, misuse of the waste collection service and contamination of waste.”
The Benefits
The Council’s collection contractor also runs Mayrise Waste Management software on a live linked computer in their depot. Issues relating to collections are communicated in real time to depot staff and each type of report has defined time constraints and actions required to resolution.
Intelligence gained by either the Council’s contractors or own team during the investigation of reported incidents is also recorded in Mayrise where it can be used to report back to the customer or be used for further action by the council. For example in the case of missed bins the contractor reports an average 50:50 split between justified and unjustified complaints; reports that are recorded as unjustified may be, for example, where a bin has not been presented at the right time, the right place, or in a collectible condition.
Customer service experienced by residents of Portsmouth City Council’s Waste Services is reflected in the either steady or improving KPI figures. In summary these include:
- Overall no significant drop in KPIs for 2013/14
- A drop in both missed recycling collections and missed refuse collections compared to 2012/13
- An improvement in street cleanliness
The Future
Portsmouth Waste Management team is now working with Yotta to further integrate their waste management solution with their contractors system. A requirement for GPS enabled field data capture has also been identified. This would help crews on the ground record and report impediments to service prior to residents reporting an issue. For example time stamped, GPS located photographs showing a non-presented bin would enable the contractor to justify a property ‘lock out’ where no further action is required and the report does not impact on KPI reporting.
Additional service areas and projects where the use of Mayrise Waste Management software may be used to improve service delivery and reporting include the Council’s highly successful Big Recycle project and the popular Green Waste Club.
“Mayrise Waste Management gives us the tools we need to record and resolve issues related to the delivery of our waste and recycling service. The system is easy to use – for Customer Service operatives, our client team and our waste contractor, it allows for real time monitoring and reporting and supports our goal for continuous improvement as demonstrated by our steadily improving KPI,” commented Vincent Venus.
“Having worked with Mayrise for more than ten years we know they will support us in our plans for the future. With their technical expertise and our frontline experience any developments we implement will benefit the residents of Portsmouth with higher service levels, fewer complaints and speedier resolution of issues.”
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