Report To:	Scrutiny and Overview Committee	30 April 2015
Lead Officer:	Mike Hill, Director Health & Environmental Services

BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT & EFFICIENCY PROGRAMME (BIEP)

WASTE & RECYCLING SERVICE CHANGES EVALUATION

Purpose

As part of the Business Improvement and Efficiency Programme (BIEP), in February 2014, Cabinet agreed to a package of changes to the waste and recycling service in order to achieve required efficiency savings of £400k in 2015/16 and in-year savings of £200k in 2014/15.

This paper is not a key decision; the report provides an evaluation of the service changes to inform ongoing service development, particularly Shared Service development.

Recommendations

It is recommended that Scrutiny and Overview Committee notes:

The content of this report and the successful delivery of the project.

The extra efforts of all waste and recycling service staff; waste operations and policy officers, supervisors, drivers and crews, in working hard to deliver the changes.

Executive Summary

The service delivered all agreed changes to time and has achieved required in-year savings of £200k and a further £400k of savings in 2015/16. Overall recycling and composting performance has been unaffected, with an improvement on previous year’s performance from 57% to 58%* of waste recycled and composted. Changes have also achieved additional environmental benefits equating to 56 tonnes of CO2 savings in a full year through reduction in fuel use. With regards to resident satisfaction, indications are that the majority of residents’ remain satisfied with the overall standard of the waste and recycling service.

Performance can largely be attributed to the design of service changes. A significant portion of service change happened ‘behind the scenes’, therefore not directly felt by residents, as in the case of route optimisation. Other changes sought to be sensitive to the residents’ use of the service, as in the case of monthly green bins, introduced during a time when the service received the least amount of waste; and/or, time limited, as in the case of monthly green bins to three months of the year and changes to Christmas collections.

The necessity to achieve a required level of in-year savings in 2014/15 has required several service changes to be implemented at the same time and within a relatively short period. As expected, this put a strain on the service, which was also undergoing significant organisational change. As anticipated, this has had an effect on the implementation of the changes, notably increasing implementation costs. The service has however managed these issues, reflected by a return towards pre-service change missed bin numbers and through required savings remaining unaffected.

The delivery of the service changes has provided valuable learning for ongoing service development. It has highlighted what can be gained from closer working with all those affected by the changes to better understand any potential wider implications and what could be put in place to deal with them (as in the case of the Contact Centre); and help ensure all essential operational knowledge is captured (as with informal assisted bin collections provided to help residents).

Deliverables

The project successfully delivered the following changes as per agreed timescales, between September 2014 and February 2015:

A detailed review and re-modelling exercise was undertaken, which reduced the number of household waste collection rounds from 210 down to 180.

As a result the service reduced its fleet by two Refuse Collection Vehicles from 1 September 2014, resulting in a reduction in the number of posts by 12. These were achieved without the need for compulsory redundancies, through planned management of vacancies.

All 180 new household waste collection rounds went live on 1 September, with just nine out of over 63,000 households requiring a change to collection days.

A driver-only Trade Waste Service was introduced on 1 September (previously the service was operated with driver plus loader).

Monthly green bin collections were introduced from December to February, and returned to fortnightly collections in time for spring.

New working practices, new working patterns and new service management tools and systems were also introduced from September 1 to support and enable these service changes.

The service, responding to efficiency saving ideas sought from staff, also trialled changes to Christmas collection arrangements in 2014/15. A break in service was introduced to achieve further efficiencies and return schedules back to normal after Christmas quicker than in previous years.

Financial

Service changes have achieved the required in-year savings of £200,000 in 2014/15 and are set to achieve sustainable full-year savings of £400,000 in 2015/16.

The simultaneous implementation of a number of significant service changes over a seven month period, along with organisational changes within the service during this time, have given rise to increased implementation costs, primarily around new working practices taking longer than anticipated to bed in. However, these costs have not impacted on the project achieving the required level of savings in this year.

Customer Satisfaction

The annual Waste & Recycling Service Customer Satisfaction Survey was undertaken between February and April. This year we trialled a self-selecting on-line survey of residents, where in previous years the survey had been a postal survey of a randomly selected sample of residents. This change in the methodology has resulted in a lower response rate, with 375 responses received compared with 811 in previous years. However, this does still provide a good indication of customer satisfaction, particularly given its timing, immediately following the winter green bin and Christmas service changes.

The survey findings indicate that the majority of respondents remain satisfied with the waste and recycling service:

A high proportion of respondents, 304, stated that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the service.

The majority of respondents, 236, stated that they felt the green bin scheme service standards had either been maintained or improved over the last year.

A smaller proportion of respondents, 124, felt the green bin service had worsened over the last year, with the introduction of monthly green bins being cited by 37.

Some of the 26 respondents, who stated they felt that the green bin scheme had improved over the last year, provided positive commentary on the changes, stating that they made ‘good economic sense’ and were ‘a brilliant idea’.

Of the 375 respondents, 11 put forward Christmas collections as a reason for feeling that the service had worsened.

A total of 163 complaints were received directly by the service over the period February 2014 to March 2015 regarding the changes, which although regrettable, represent less than 1% of residents. Interestingly, a common response was the proposal of monthly black bins as a more appropriate alternative to monthly green bins. A further three residents contacted the service directly to register their support for monthly green bins and where staff sought feedback from residents they also received positive feedback.

During the implementation of service changes and as anticipated whilst crews learned their new rounds, missed bin numbers increased, thereby increasing calls received by the Contact Centre. The potential impact on the Contact Centre was not fully recognised during development and mitigation put in place e.g. greater use of’ digital by default’.

Missed bins numbers peaked at 184 in every 100k collections missed during September (or 99.8% of collections made on time). This is down to 60 in every 100k collections missed during February (or 99.9% of collections made on time), with a target to return to pre-September performance of on average 43 in every 100K collections missed 2015/16.

A high proportion of those bins not collected on time were assisted collections. A review revealed that this was largely due to discrepancies in management information. Historically crews had been providing assisted collections to residents on their pre-September rounds, to help residents when they saw the need. Many of these assisted collections were not formally captured, so when crews were allocated new rounds this knowledge transferred with them. Missed assisted bin collections during the initial month of changes were at 132 of the 983 residents receiving assisted collections. Numbers have been managed down to 35 in February, returning towards pre-service change levels.

With all findings considered, even though the survey this year was self-selecting, there is every indication that customer satisfaction levels have not been significantly affected by the service changes. As anticipated, performance has been affected during the implementation of changes, as new working practices bed-in, with this lessening on return to pre-service performance levels.

Environmental

Recycling and Composting

The percentage of waste recycled and composted increased slightly from 57% in 2013/14 to 58%* in 2014/15. Dry recycling rates have been sustained and the amount of green waste collected has increased slightly, up 3% on previous year. This is reflected on average across the partnership**, with the exception of East Cambridgeshire, who has seen marked improvements in diversion rates following the introduction of wheeled bins.

Whilst overall performance has not been affected by service changes, waste data shows variations for the period of December to February. As more than one service change was introduced during this period, it is difficult to attribute variations to any one particular service change. This is further complicated both by more general yearly and seasonal changes to waste trends. We can however, for the purposes of informing service development, have regard to the following, which have been discussed and agreed with colleagues at Cambridgeshire County Council waste disposal who operate Household Recycling Centres:

During the period of monthly green bins (December, January and February), waste data shows a decrease of around 1100 tonnes in green bin waste, compared to the same period the previous year (representing just under 5% of total green waste collected). The true figure, given district and seasonal fluctuations, is likely to be less that this, although cannot be quantified.

Waste data shows no directly corresponding increase in black bin waste collected, indicating that there has been no significant move of green waste to the black bin, highlighted as a potential risk. The amount of fly-tipping handled by the authority has reduced, compared with the same period the previous year.

Household Recycling Centre tonnages show a total increase of 25 tonnes, estimated as attributable to South Cambridgeshire residents, over the same period, when compared with tonnages received the previous year. Again, due to fluctuations in waste tonnages, it is not possible to attribute tonnage to service changes.

With regards to Christmas collection changes, recycling tonnage in December and January is comparable to the previous year and performs better than all other partnering districts at this time, including East Cambridgeshire.

CO2 savings

Resulting CO2 savings from reduction in fuel use are calculated as 33 tonnes for 2014/15 and 56 tonnes for 2015/16.

*Performance may change and recycling increase as not all recycling tonnage had been reported for inclusion at the time of writing.

**Partnership figures were calculated using figures up to February 14/15 as figures for March were not available at the time of writing. East Cambridgeshire was not included in any average figure calculations as changes to its services has influenced performance.

Learning

The project provides valuable learning, which will inform both future developments of the service and the authority more widely, in particular:

The need to understand the wider impact of changes both internally e.g. the Contact Centre and externally e.g. RECAP partners, so that appropriate mitigations could be put in place.

Earlier and closer engagement with all those affected by the changes. For example, establishing the Staff Working Group earlier to gather all operational knowledge and experience from crews, which would have helped mitigate a rise in assisted bin collections.

Conclusion

The measure of success is a service’s ability to deliver significant changes that achieve a required level savings without affecting service performance. The delivery of the changes to the waste service can be said to have succeeded in this respect, largely down to the considered design of a package of service changes.

The challenge was in the implementation of a number of significant changes concurrently over a short period of time, which difficult in itself, occurred as the service underwent significant organisational change. Service performance has therefore, understandably, been affected during this period, with new working practice taking longer to bed-in. However, the service has responded well to issues during this time and is now seeing a return to pre-service performance levels.

Background Papers

Where the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012 require documents to be open to inspection by members of the public, they must be available for inspection: -

(a)	at all reasonable hours at the offices of South Cambridgeshire District Council;

(b)	on the Council’s website; and

(c)	in the case of documents to be available for inspection pursuant to regulation 15, on payment of a reasonable fee required by the Council by the person seeking to inspect the documents at the offices of South Cambridgeshire District Council.

Business Improvement & Efficiency Programme (BIEP) Waste & Recycling Review:

http://moderngov/documents/s74437/BIEP%20Waste%20Recycling%20Review%20-%20rep.pdf

Report Author:	Helen Taylor – Waste Minimisation & Recycling Officer

Telephone: (01954) 713192

Paul Quigley – Head of Service Environment Commissioning

Telephone: (01954) 713134