Blog posts about waste

On 25 April we’ll be hosting a webinar for local authorities focused on our digital residential waste management service WasteWorks, and we’d love for you to join us.

During the webinar we’ll demonstrate how the service works for local authorities, show how it integrates with different in-cab and payment systems and discuss the impact it has had so far for councils, their residents and their contractors.

Now available on the recently launched G-Cloud 13 framework, WasteWorks was designed in collaboration with Bromley Council and Veolia to simplify access to waste services online and reduce unnecessary contact to the council. It was also shortlisted for a LGC Award 2022 in the Public/Private Partnership category.

Come along to the webinar to:

• learn about WasteWorks’ features and see how they work;
• understand how different councils are using the software and how it is achieving a 40% drop in unnecessary contact while increasing Direct Debit subscriptions;
• have the chance to ask questions about how the software could work for you.

Get your free ticket for the webinar on Eventbrite.

The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames has chosen SocietyWorks’ self-service waste portal WasteWorks, for managing resident access to waste online more efficiently and transparently, starting with garden waste and looking ahead to incorporate wider domestic waste services.

Residents of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames will now be able to access the council’s garden waste services via a dedicated version of SocietyWorks’ new online waste portal WasteWorks, which was launched in 2021 in collaboration with Bromley Council and Veolia. Using the portal, residents will be able to view their garden waste subscriptions, order new containers and use one-off card payments for non recurring subscriptions, all within the same workflow. There will soon be a Direct Debit function for residents to use for recurring subscriptions, too. While initially focused on improving the resident experience for garden waste, plans are in place to roll WasteWorks out to manage the council’s wider domestic waste service transactions. 

Optimised to work on whatever device residents want to use, WasteWorks will enable the Council to provide a more convenient and seamless online experience for residents thanks to integration with the council’s in-cab system provided by Veolia Echo and payment provider Capita. WasteWorks will also help to deliver a more transparent waste service by enabling a two-way flow of information to keep residents informed on the status of their waste subscriptions, payments, reports and requests. Customer services will be able to use the same user-centred workflow to manage waste subscriptions on behalf of residents over the phone.

The introduction of WasteWorks, which was recently shortlisted for a LGC Award 2022 in conjunction with Bromley Council, is a joint venture between the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and the London Borough of Sutton, whose own dedicated version of the portal is currently in development. This comes as part of the ongoing improvements being established by the South London Waste Partnership, of which both Kingston and Sutton are members. The two councils approached SocietyWorks to help further digitise their existing online domestic waste system and move towards a consistent approach to online waste services across the boroughs, which will also benefit their shared waste provider Veolia by improving communication between its in-cab system, the councils and residents.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “We’re delighted to be helping the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames bring its online waste system in line with resident expectations. It’s always a pleasure to work with councils that not only put resident needs first, but also work very collaboratively with neighbouring councils and their other external partners to deliver more wide-reaching improvements. We look forward to helping more councils across the UK do the same.” 

Councillor John Sweeney, Portfolio Holder for Business, Recycling and Customer Contact added: “We are excited to be one of the first boroughs to use this innovative system. This new online portal will allow residents to more easily keep track of their subscription payments. It is great to know that this system has been developed with another London council and we look forward to rolling it out across the borough.”

Scott Edgell, General Manager, Veolia SLWP said: “Our teams work hard to serve over 70,000 Kingston households with recycling and waste collections, including 14,000 signed up to the garden waste collection service. We’re so pleased to be supporting Kingston Council with the implementation of their new waste portal with the help of SocietyWorks, so that the high quality service we strive to deliver to residents is reflected in a better experience online, and look forward to the platform’s development in Sutton.”

Take a look at The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames’ new green waste system or contact us to discuss how WasteWorks could work for your authority.

When it comes to reporting problems with domestic waste bins, citizens tend to wait until there’s a problem with more than one of their bins to take action. 

Usually, this requires the creation of a separate report for each problem or bin. So if you have a problem with the lid of your domestic black bin and an issue with the wheels on your green garden waste bin, you would have to make two different reports.

As well as being time consuming for citizens, this also creates more work for council waste teams, who need to process multiple reports and organise separate resolutions all for the same address.

This cumbersome process is one of many user experience pain points that we wanted to address when we designed our domestic, green and bulky waste portal WasteWorks.

WasteWorks has the functionality to enable councils to let residents report problems with multiple bins at their address within the same workflow. 

Here’s an example of how it works for Peterborough City Council.

All problems for all affected bins are neatly packaged into one report, which automatically enters Peterborough’s in-cab system Bartec via direct integration, meaning no manual intervention from staff and no duplication of effort for frontline waste teams. From the single report, different reference numbers will be provided from Bartec back to the resident to help with tracking the progress from report to resolution for each issue.  

It’s a simple but significant feature that counts toward the many ways in which WasteWorks helps to make it easier for citizens to access domestic waste services online, while also creating a more efficient, streamlined process for council staff.

WasteWorks customers don’t have to allow the reporting of multiple bins at once; this is an optional feature that is dependant on the type of in-cab system you use and the configuration of your reporting processes.

Want to find out more about WasteWorks and how it could work for you? Request a short demo with the SocietyWorks team.

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Image: Pawel Czerwinski

Peterborough City Council has broadened its partnership with SocietyWorks to handle domestic waste online through its new WasteWorks service.

Peterborough City Council has adopted WasteWorks, a new waste service from citizen-focused local authority services provider SocietyWorks, to improve the way residents access waste online. The new service will empower residents to easily self-serve reports and requests from any device, while helping the council to streamline processes, deliver faster resolutions and reduce demand on customer contact centres thanks to an automatic two-way flow of data from front to backend system.

Integrated directly into Peterborough’s in-cab system Bartec and branded to complement the council’s website, WasteWorks will allow residents to manage all of their waste requirements from one place, whether it’s to report a missed bin collection or to pay for a bulky waste collection – which is currently being worked on and set to be delivered later this year. Behind the scenes, the service will seamlessly feed information between citizen, administrator and inspector, helping the council to better manage expectations and close the feedback loop through automated notifications and intelligent tools for on-the-ground inspectors.

This is the second SocietyWorks service to have been adopted by Peterborough City Council, which has been successfully using FixMyStreet Pro to take reports from residents about street and highways problems since 2019. The council will be able to access both WasteWorks and FixMyStreet Pro reports from a central dashboard, which includes a live heatmap to track category, seasonal and area-based trends.

Councillor Nigel Simons, cabinet member for Waste, Street Scene and the Environment, said: “We are fully committed to improving waste services across Peterborough and as part of this commitment, we want to enhance the way residents access services online. The new WasteWorks service will make a positive difference and I would encourage residents to log on and see for themselves.”

Councillor Marco Cereste, cabinet member for Digital Services and Transformation, added: “We want to engage better with residents online and enhance the overall user experience. This is a big step forwards and just the start of improvements to our online services.”

Mark Cridge, Chief Executive at SocietyWorks said: “We’re thrilled to be working with Peterborough City Council again. By integrating both FixMyStreet Pro and WasteWorks into its line of business systems, the council and its residents will benefit from a truly joined-up reporting service that puts user-friendliness at its heart.

“Peterborough is a really forward-thinking council, and it’s been a real pleasure to collaborate with the team on this project and build a service that works around the real-life needs of residents and staff.”

Residents in Peterborough can access the new waste service right now.

WasteWorks is available to all UK councils. Request a demo to find out more.

Bromley Council has partnered with SocietyWorks to launch WasteWorks, a new online waste service to take the rubbish out of handling domestic, bulky and green waste online.

Designed by SocietyWorks in consultation with Bromley Council, WasteWorks empowers citizens to manage their own waste online, thanks to a self-service system that is easy to use on any device and which adheres to government accessibility standards.

What residents can do via Bromley Council’s new waste service:

• Check their bin days;
• Report a missed bin collection;
• Request a new container;
• Make an enquiry;
• Pay or set up a direct debit for a green waste collection.

Integrated directly into Bromley’s Waste Contractor’s system and branded to complement the council’s website, WasteWorks acts as a user-friendly front door for residents to submit waste reports, requests and payments, while taking care of the complex data flow between different line of business systems behind the scenes.

The result is a dramatically improved user experience for residents and a significantly reduced burden on customer contact centre staff, who can break away from expensive manual processes and re-keying.

Plus, automated updates and templated responses make it easier for Bromley to manage expectations, handle seasonal demand and deliver a more transparent service, while internal dashboards and visual heat maps enable staff to track service levels and identify trends. 

Jim Cowan, Waste Services Contract Manager at Bromley Council said: “WasteWorks builds on the previous online reporting we had within our Waste Services area, offering our residents a level of self-service for our Green Garden Waste subscriptions which has been a long-held ambition.  The ability to adjust and tweak customer messaging and templates through the administration area allows us to respond quickly and keep the customers informed as we take them through the process, which helps us drive down those avoidable contacts and queries.”

Mark Cridge, Chief Executive at SocietyWorks said: “For councils that are, like Bromley, serious about improving citizen access to waste services online, WasteWorks is an essential solution that provides a real opportunity to achieve much-sought after channel shift, create savings and drive efficiencies for citizens and staff.” 

Residents in Bromley can access the new waste service right now – take a look.

WasteWorks is available to all UK councils – request a demo to see how it could work for you.

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Image: Shane Rounce

SocietyWorks is proud to be sponsoring this year’s District Councils’ Network Annual Conference, which takes place on 21 – 22 October.

District Councils’ Network (DCN) is a cross-party member led network of 183 district councils and a Special Interest Group of the Local Government Association (LGA).

This will be the first time we’re attending the conference, so we’re excited to meet everyone and introduce ourselves to the network.

We’ll also be introducing our new digital domestic waste service WasteWorks, co-designed with Bromley and Peterborough Councils. 

With citizens spending a lot more time at home during the last eighteen months, awareness of local authority waste services has never been sharper, so we’re keen to talk to attendees about how we can help councils to manage those rising expectations for on-demand access and fast resolutions. 

If you’re heading to the conference, do come over to our stand and say hello to David and Sally, who will be representing us on both days of the event. Grab a brochure for WasteWorks, or stick around for a chat about all things digital government, service transformation and giving residents the best possible customer experience.

In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about what we do, you can find out more here.

View and monitor reports for each of your service areas through one visual heatmap, built into the dashboard of FixMyStreet Pro and WasteWorks.

Back in 2019 we worked with Bromley Council to introduce a new heatmap feature to FixMyStreet Pro’s arsenal of tools for council staff. 

The heatmap converts report data into a visual format that is easy to understand, allowing council staff to see at a glance which issues are most prevalent, and where they are being reported.

Since being rolled out to all Pro customers, the heatmap has become one of the service’s most popular and useful features, which is why we built the same functionality for our new waste service WasteWorks.

Bromley also co-designed WasteWorks with us, and so is one of the first councils to go live with the service and benefit from being able to track and manage more than one service area from a single, central dashboard.

Now, when Bromley staff log in to their FixMyStreet Pro dashboard and select the heatmap overlay, as well as being able to view street and highways reports, they can also see where reports and requests are being submitted through WasteWorks for waste services.

The heatmap looks and works in the same way as before for Bromley. Hotter colours represent higher report volume, cooler colours represent fewer reports, and dropdown filters allow staff to view report data by category, status, timeframe and ward.

By default, the heatmap shows every report made to the council in the last month, so initially the map will look something like this:

But now, without needing to leave the page, Bromley staff can view reports about, say, fly-tips, made in the last 12 months, which have been closed…

…or, green garden waste subscriptions, which have been completed in the last 5 days.

Heatmaps for both FixMyStreet Pro and WasteWorks are available to all UK councils. If you’d like to see how they work, you can request a demo.

We’re very pleased to announce the launch of WasteWorks: a reliable, citizen-centred system for councils to manage all elements of domestic, bulky and green garden waste online, from missed bin reports to online payments for collections.

Designed with the same focus on usability that has made FixMyStreet and FixMyStreet Pro so popular with councils and citizens alike, WasteWorks makes the end-to-end process of managing waste online easier and more efficient through intelligent integration with in-cab software systems. So whether a resident needs to request a new container or set up a direct debit for a green garden waste subscription, it can all be done in one place.

With an intuitive, user-friendly interface that aids channel shift, the service helps councils reduce operating costs by lowering demand on customer service centres, while also dramatically improving the citizen user experience thanks to increased transparency and a self-service system that is easy to use on any device and which meets government accessibility standards.

“WasteWorks provides councils with the opportunity to bring about real improvements to the way citizens access waste services online.”

– David Eaton, SocietyWorks

WasteWorks can be integrated into any and all existing in-cab software systems (eg Alloy, Veolia/Echo and Bartec). Once connected and branded to complement the council’s website, the service acts as a one-stop shop for citizens to access all aspects of waste – whether that’s to report a missed bin within time frames specified by the council, to self-serve a payment for a bulky waste collection, or to set up an ongoing green garden waste subscription. Automated updates and templated responses make it easier for councils to manage expectations and deliver a more transparent service, while internal dashboards and visual heat maps enable staff to track service levels and identify trends.

David Eaton, Sales Director at SocietyWorks said: “WasteWorks provides councils with the opportunity to achieve much-sought after channel shift, create savings and bring about real improvements to the way citizens access waste services online. Understanding the importance of making it as easy as possible for residents to access the services they need, while also making sure public funds go as far as possible, we applied the easy-to-use user interface behind our popular FixMyStreet Pro service to waste, creating one front door through which citizens can make all reports and requests – be it for an assisted collection or for a green garden waste subscription – and removing the need to access and understand different fault reporting processes for different issues.”

“That same focus on usability has also been applied to the WasteWorks management interface for council staff, providing a simple experience that works in tandem with existing systems,” he added. “The result is a service that demonstrably puts citizens first, while lessening the burden on council staff.”

Like all of SocietyWorks’ public authority services, WasteWorks has been developed in consultation with councils and with citizens at its heart. Councils taking up the service will benefit from SocietyWorks’ unstinting focus on usability and continual development roadmap.

WasteWorks is available to all UK councils from today. Click here to request a demo.

That’s a question our design team has been asking recently as part of our work on phase two of Bromley Council’s new citizen-centred waste product, which involves incorporating green garden waste subscriptions into the service.

“Subscriptions like green garden waste collections can involve multiple council systems and departments, so our task is to make sure that process feels natural and intuitive to residents,” explains SocietyWorks designer Zarino.

“In this project, we used prototypes to help us identify and confirm user needs—for both residents and council staff—pinning down exactly what the green garden waste service needs to do, and how the interface should work, to allow residents to create and manage their subscriptions in a way that suits them.”

The prototypes for the green garden waste front-end have now been completed and accepted by the Council, so we thought we’d lift the lid and let you take a look at how the front-end is shaping up.

So what does a green garden waste front-end need to do?

It needs to display green garden waste collections. The citizen needs to be able to identify their property and view all collection information related to it: whether a subscription is active, what are the previous and upcoming collections, the number of containers being collected and when the subscription renews.

It needs to provide self-service subscriptions to green garden waste collections. If no collections are set up for the property, the citizen needs to be able to complete a form providing relevant information for the council to create a subscription – collection address (from UPRN), contact information, whether new containers are required and payment details for the collection. The citizen should be encouraged to check their details are correct before submitting, and needs to agree to the terms and conditions. Once the payment has been processed and the citizen has been sent a confirmation email, a confirmation page reiterating that their subscription has now been set up should be displayed.

It needs to take requests for more or fewer green garden waste containers. On occasions when the citizen requires more or fewer containers, a multi-page form will help them to complete their request. This should ask how many containers are required, and should redirect the citizen to a cancellation form if they want to reduce containers to zero. Here again, the citizen needs to be able to self-serve all of the relevant information, and a confirmation needs to be available once the request has been submitted.

It needs to handle return or replacement requests of green garden waste containers. In this instance, the citizen needs to be able to define within a multi-page form why they need to return or replace a container and what actions they require next, if any. A summary of the information should be provided, and a confirmation that the request was submitted should be shown afterwards.

And it needs to enable subscription renewals or cancellations. The citizen needs to be able renew or cancel their subscription to green garden waste collections. For renewals, the citizen should be able to refine their subscription if needed (for example, request more or fewer containers), while for cancellations, the citizen needs to be shown what cancelling the subscription means and needs to be able to provide information on how many containers are to be returned to the council.

Of course, there are lots of other, more client-specific things the front-end for Bromley Council’s green garden waste service will do in addition to the above, but these are the essentials.

The green garden waste service we’re designing for Bromley Council is part of a broader waste service SocietyWorks will very soon be launching for all UK councils, built with years and years of experience putting citizens at the front and centre of local authority services. Book a demo to see how it works.

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Image: Alexas_Fotos on Pixabay

Spring is in the air, the clocks have gone forward and it’s been another busy sprint for the SocietyWorks team – here’s what we got up to.

mySociety team meeting

We attended the first mySociety team meeting of the year (online, of course), where we took a look at what we’d achieved over the past 12 months, and what we need to achieve in the next 12. It was a great opportunity to speak to colleagues and share the SocietyWorks strategy and vision with the rest of the team.

During the meeting, we hosted various breakout sessions, including a marketing catch-up to see all the new things our Marketing & PR Manager Sally has been working on. We also reviewed our internal coding practises with Senior Developer Chris. We’ve got our fingers crossed for an in-person meeting soon, as much as we did all enjoy receiving cookies in the post to nibble on throughout the meeting!

Bromley waste project

As well as the team meeting, we’ve been continuing work on Bromley Council’s new waste project and have started our internal review process, in preparation for handover to the client in a few weeks’ time.

Hackney noise case management

We also made progress on our new product NoiseWorks with Hackney Council (read more about it here). We’ve been getting up to speed on the discovery interviews Zarino, one of our wonderful designers, has been holding and working out what our next set of priorities will be.

FixMyStreet Pro

We’ve also been meeting with lots of our FixMyStreet Pro customers, with Account Manager Clare holding her quarterly account management meetings. These meetings give us the chance to regularly check in and catch up with our clients to discuss feedback, issues and any concerns they may have. We also talk about the latest feature developments to FixMyStreet Pro, as well as providing a SocietyWorks product update, which currently includes our new WasteWorks product. Here again, we are very much looking forward to being able to see our clients face-to-face once more in the near future!

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Image: Tatiana Rodriguez on Unsplash