West Suffolk Councils

Garden Waste Introduction

Faced with a “difficult financial climate” West Suffolk decided in November 2015 to introduce a subscription based garden waste service in at the start of the next financial year. Like many other councils, they had to make tough choices about which services to keep and introducing a charged-for garden waste scheme was seen as a way to help cope with a reduction in funding.

It was imperative that the garden waste subscription and renewal processes were rationalised, avoiding inefficient and time consuming manual input. The solution required the Collective system to be tightly integrated with West Suffolk’s financial and CRM systems to support the automation of business processes, from initial enquiry to successful payment to bin deliveries and collections.

Initially the Collective system received a nightly file from West Suffolk’s finance system. This file included details of all:

• New Subscriptions
• Cancellations
• House Moves

Automated processes in Collective, meant that upon receipt of a successful subscription, Collective automatically raises a Garden Waste Subscription service request, plus any Bin Delivery jobs required. These jobs are then automatically assigned to the relevant crews. Once the crews have confirmed the delivery of bins, collection schedules are automatically applied without any manual intervention.

Customers receive communication through automated emails, sent from the Collective back-office system. Such communications provide residents with confirmation that their request has been received and processed.

Operational crews see their collection and delivery jobs via their in-cab, touch screen tablets Premises with current garden waste subscriptions are clearly displayed to the crews. Crews can confirm completion or report exceptions via their touch screen devices and update the status of each job in real time.