Publica Group

In the last 12 months West Oxfordshire DC received over 25k phone calls relating to missed bins which equates to 34% of all contact relating to waste services. As failure demand, this issue also creates significant cause for concern with local Councillors. 90% of all missed bin reported are reported via non digital channels despite us having online forms enabling them to be reported online.

Publica runs services for a number of local authorities (Cheltenham BC, Cotswold DC, Forest of Dean DC and West Oxfordshire DC).  Each of the waste services is different with differing receptacles, collection schedules and policies. 3 of these councils use the same waste contractor (Ubico) and they would be involved in the Discovery. Pembrokeshire use neither Publica nor Ubico so would ensure the process is scalable.

We want to re-design the end to end process using digital technology having fully understood the customer needs and the problem we are trying to solve. By doing a Discovery across the wide user base we have, we feel this is a brilliant opportunity.  We would like to understand;

• Why bins are missed in the first place
• Why digital channels are still not the channel of choice for customers when reporting issues
• Whether our complex policies around waste collection making the processes more complex for the customer and/or the contractor
• Whether better technology within the waste vehicles will assist in improving the service or would we be fixing the wrong problem