Blog posts about WasteWorks

Through integration with in-cab systems, our front-end residential waste solution WasteWorks can retrieve updates and display them to residents in a user-friendly way. 

These updates are intended to preempt common questions residents might have about their waste collections to reduce the need for them to contact the council via phone or email. 

Depending on the type of information available within the in-cab system, updates can relate to anything from sharing when a resident’s bin will next be collected to confirming that a collection has happened or explaining why a collection was unsuccessful.

In doing this, councils can eliminate avoidable customer contact and its associated costs by enabling residents to self-serve key, time-sensitive information. 

How does preemptive messaging work via WasteWorks?

Updates are retrieved via API integration with in-cab systems and can be served as messages to users in a number of ways.

For example, if a resident goes to report that their collection has been missed and the in-cab system knows the reason is because there was a vehicle obstructing the road, messaging can be displayed to inform the resident of this and explain next steps.

Equally, messaging can be displayed to explain that no collection was carried out at an address because the waste was not presented, and the missed collection report form can be disabled until the next collection round has begun. 

Additionally, councils may want to share messaging on the homepage of their WasteWorks service about planned changes to collection schedules in advance of bank holidays, so that residents know what to expect.

Notifying residents of changes to bin collection schedules

In the event of councils needing to make changes to scheduled collections, this information is best shared with residents before they need to go looking for it.

WasteWorks gives residents the ability to download the collection schedule for their property to their device’s calendar. Any changes made to the schedule will be reflected directly and automatically. 

It’s also possible to integrate the service with GOV.UK Notify to send notifications to residents via text or email about waste collections. 

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Want to learn more about WasteWorks? There’s more information here, or why not book a short demo with the team.

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Image: Centre for Ageing Better

Brent Council is working with SocietyWorks to improve the online experience for residents when contacting the authority about two of its most in-demand services: residential waste and street and environment reporting.   

Residents in Brent can now make use of two new digital portals, both powered by SocietyWorks’ citizen-centred technology: one for making waste-related requests, reports and payments online, using WasteWorks; the other for reporting street and environmental problems, using FixMyStreet Pro.

Branded to look exactly like the rest of Brent Council’s online environment and integrated directly with the Council’s existing asset, in-cab and payment systems, both WasteWorks and FixMyStreet Pro have enabled the council to facilitate a smooth transition for residents and staff, with no interruption to delivery. These integrations also permit information to be shared to and from residents, the Council and its contractors to help keep the feedback loop closed and improve resident satisfaction.

Brent Council’s dedicated instance of WasteWorks simplifies access to waste services online by providing one front door for all transactions, such as reporting a missed collection, ordering a new container or paying for a subscription to a green waste collection. Through integration, the portal can provide real-time updates about collections to residents to help Brent close the feedback loop, manage expectations and avoid unnecessary contact.

The portal was designed in collaboration with Bromley Council, and was shortlisted for the Public/Private Partnership award at the LGC Awards 2022. For Brent, we hope to replicate the success Bromley has seen with WasteWorks, with a 40% drop in unnecessary contact within the first few months of launching and a continual rise in subscriptions to waste services.

Meanwhile, through FixMyStreet Pro, residents can report local problems such as potholes, blocked drains and fly-tipping. The solution is designed as a progressive web app, giving residents the option to use it as an app or a website, with no obligation either way. It also has the unique ability to automatically triage reports on a nationwide scale, including to Transport for London, which reduces avoidable contact and eliminates manual intervention.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “Consistency is key when it comes to improving the digital experience for residents, and with both WasteWorks and FixMyStreet Pro working in tandem for Brent, residents will benefit from using an efficient and intuitive interface across two different but equally in-demand service areas. It is a pleasure to collaborate with a council that takes such a forward-thinking and thorough approach to digital transformation.”

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If you would like to know more about FixMyStreet Pro or WasteWorks, request a free, informal demo here.

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 London Borough of Sutton has become the latest council to adopt SocietyWorks’ digital residential waste management portal, WasteWorks, to more efficiently and transparently manage resident access to waste services online.

SocietyWorks is providing a dedicated version of its integrated online waste management portal, WasteWorks, to the London Borough of Sutton. Through the portal, residents can access the council’s domestic waste services, including checking their collection days and requesting new bins, as well as subscribing to and paying for green waste subscriptions, all from within the same self-service workflow.

WasteWorks was launched in 2021 in collaboration with Bromley Council and Veolia, and was shortlisted for a LGC Award 2022. For Sutton, the portal is integrated with Veolia Echo and Barclaycard to provide a more convenient, seamless and transparent online experience for residents, while streamlining processes for staff and contractors to help reduce avoidable contacts and better manage expectations. 

The introduction of WasteWorks is a joint venture between the London Borough of Sutton and the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, whose own dedicated version of the portal launched a few months ago for handling green waste. This comes as part of the ongoing improvements being established by the South London Waste Partnership (SLWP), of which both councils are members.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “It is always an honour to be trusted by a council to introduce a new service and bring about sought-after improvements for citizens. We’re proud to have the backing of the SLWP in introducing WasteWorks for the boroughs of Sutton and Kingston upon Thames. Together, we can deliver a unified digital experience for residents, connecting multiple suppliers together while simplifying online access to waste services for residents.” 

Paul Brockwell, Interim Head of Waste and Street Cleaning at London Borough of Sutton said: “The London Borough of Sutton recently opted for WasteWorks to provide digital waste solutions for our Waste collection service, having witnessed the great work already achieved at The London Borough of Bromley. The system has enabled Sutton Council to provide a seamless and much improved online experience for Sutton residents. SocietyWorks has been extremely sensitive to our needs as an organisation and worked tirelessly to provide the authority with solutions in a very short timeframe that benefit the borough as a whole.”

Take a look at WasteWorks for the London Borough of Sutton.

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Find out more about WasteWorks.

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

We are delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted for the Public/Private Partnership award at the LGC Awards 2022 for the work we completed with the London Borough of Bromley to develop a new, self-service digital domestic and green waste service.

The service, WasteWorks, is a secure, user-centred and fully integrated front-end system, designed to meet rising resident expectations for on-demand, self-service access to waste, while also helping councils to reduce costs and improve customer communications.

Within just a few months of launching WasteWorks, Bromley Council was seeing a 40% drop in avoidable customer contacts thanks to the system’s functionality to provide clear, citizen-friendly response templates that can be adjusted in real-time.

The council was also able to realise a long held ambition to provide an integrated Direct Debit option for payments for Green Waste services. Despite only being available for a short time, Direct Debits already account for a quarter of all transactions and are greatly reducing time and resources in issuing and processing renewal correspondence.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “We are incredibly proud of the partnership we have built with Bromley Council over the last ten years. Bromley’s dedicated team shares our desire to improve the accessibility and transparency of digital council services, and this is reflected in the scalable, user-centred solutions we produce together and their positive impact on residents and staff.

“We are thrilled to be shortlisted for this award and to celebrate the cohesion and trust between our teams, as well as the hard work that went into the creation of WasteWorks over the last twelve months, especially during a time when waste services have never been more important or under pressure.” 

Find out more about WasteWorks here.

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.

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.

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.