It’s for Sally, really.

You do commingled collections, same as we do at Trafford for food and garden.

If they don’t sign up for the garden, then they contaminate the bin.

Where do you go?

Because they’re not going to take the contaminants out because of The X Factor and everything else.

We just refuse to take it.

For how long?

Forever.

Yeah, yeah, eventually it will get removed at like eventually, and I mean after a long time, it would get removed as an abandoned bin, but not currently.

So we don’t.

Our food waste service options are slightly different.

So yeah, because obviously it’s a chargeable garden waste service.

Once food waste become comes in as mandatory, we will need a combination of how we collect because otherwise we’d exclude like a huge amount of the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No permit, no collection, doesn’t matter what’s in it.

Yeah, we’re quite firm about that.

Is your service fortnightly?

Yeah.

OK.

So you’ve got a food waste fortnightly service which you’d have to change to weekly?

Yes, we will have to add stuff in to make it weekly.

Yeah.

OK, Anyone else from the floor?

OK, so someone’s asked, could we have a show of hands for authorities in the room not currently charging for a garden waste service.

OK, just two.

That’s good.

Not charging.

Yeah, perfect.

Next one, Cheshire East.

What percentage uptake have you had for the 25% discounted rate and who does the rate apply to specifically?

I left that one backwards.

So it applies.

We have a set council criteria of of discounted services.

Off the top of my head it’s I can’t really remember.

It’s very specific and it is approved council wide.

So it’s not something we decided on just for the garden always service and discounted subscriptions.

I don’t know the exact percentage off the top of my head, but it’s minimal.

We haven’t got many.

We sorry, we don’t actually promote it that much.

So I mean, when they go into the portal it it does mention it, but in terms of promoting it, we don’t promote it that much.

Tick box right at the end.

Isn’t it on the terms and conditions?

Do you want 25% off?

And I think one of the, one of the challenges, sorry, one, one of the challenges throughout the implementation was to actually figure out what counts as a, for a discount because actually it’s me putting my credit card details in.

So I’m the customer.

So is it me personally being on a benefit in which case I can then get 25% discount for as many garden waste subscriptions and many houses I want to subscribe for?

Or is it the actual premises that counts?

And, and ideally you want it to be for the premises, otherwise you end up with discounts all over the place.

Next question, What do you do?

I think if a household hasn’t signed up but uses a service and there’s food waste in it, is that what we just answered?

Yeah.

What?

Maybe an what instructions do you have to the crew?

It’s just not to collect.

Leave it.

OK.

How long does it typically take to get a service in motion?

I don’t know if from view Louise just brought on the record, haven’t we, we have just done one very, very quickly in terms of Permiserve site.

We can move very, very quickly because we only require limited data sets and we can integrate with any systems and we do our own printing in house.

So therefore we we manage the whole solution.

So the the maximum would be 10 days, 10 to 14 days turn around from literally artwork to delivered in terms of in cab and setting up from chargeable.

I can’t answer that, but we have just done it very quick.

Yeah, so we’ve we’ve just done S Ayrshire in Scotland who have the most expensive system I’ve ever seen because it’s £58 is it and it’s a four weekly service.

It’s incredibly expensive and and still selling like hotcakes.

So yeah, we did that service from being a free of charge service to being a subscription service in eight weeks procured through G Cloud, no options.

This is how it works.

And effectively we’ve copied the Cheshire system minus good 95, but it’s got the credit card integrations and it’s got the integration to Permiserve.

Yeah, in in eight weeks.

I don’t ever want to do it in eight weeks again, but it can be done.

Fantastic.

So for Sally, did they use an external design company for the garden waste branding?

Yeah, that was a yes.

OK, that was a quick one.

And then Sally again, why did you have challenges internally with your communications team to brighten up your website and how did you overcome it?

So they are very corporate and I was told right at the start of this project by various people, you will never get the digital team to personalise the web page.

It is unheard of.

We’ve tried before and they are just very resistant.

This is our corporate image and that’s it.

So we went and had and did all the designs and then we found the friendliest person we could find in in the digital team and myself and PR went to them together and was like, this is our designs.

We’ve got, we’ve done like a, a border thing and we’ve got all this that and the other.

Will you put any of it on there?

And we kind of went with the expectation they might let us put the B on and that would be it.

And we were not even thinking they would let us do that.

And they had some discussions and we sort of sold it to them.

As you know, this is we need to sell this service, the council short of money.

And miraculously they were like, oh, go.

And then we’ll put that banner on Anna Bee, Anna this.

And we were all just amazed.

We’ve tried it since for other services.

And they were like, absolutely.

So I think it was, they must have just liked the design and perhaps the fact that we were like, look, we’re trying to, this is actually a project we’re selling and someone somewhere, correct?

So yeah.

Any other questions out there in the audience?

No, other than the sliding, any technology questions?

Obviously you’ve got Louise and Tim up here.

So any burning ones in that sense?

Oh, I’ve got one now.

How long does it take to automate the connection between the two services, Bartek and Permasev?

We’ve done it a lot of Times Now and there’s a very specific way in which we do it.

And once they once the IT department speaks to RIT, it’s a matter of half an hour, half an hour.

It’s just you’ve got to get the right people talking to each other.

That’s the critical bit.

And often the technology side is the bit that everyone worries about the most.

And actually, the reality is it’s the artwork and comms that takes the longest time.

the IT just need two people know what they’re talking about and it’s done.

Artwork seems to go around the houses a little bit more and there’s and that takes the time.

Perfect.

OK, I don’t know if you.

Oh, perfect.

Sorry, it was just what Tim mentioned earlier about text message notifications.

So currently went live last month and that’s something that we want to kind of look to progress.

So we just want to know how easy is it?

Have you got any lessons learnt or other councils that we can link up to that are doing that already?

No, so thank you.

Yeah, I haven’t got any councils doing it live yet.

All the bits of technology exist.

I mean, the, the, the first challenge is to know, get, getting the, the, the mobile numbers or the e-mail addresses and the consent to do it.

So once you’ve got that, that’s a more procedural challenge.

But if you’ve got things like a Misbin form or anything that’s, you know, getting a high traffic of people in who actually engage with the service.

So if you’re capturing an e-mail or a phone number with some consent as part of that Misbin transaction, you can start to build up a list and then start to give them reminders.

And you may want to start with something like a garden or subscription that’s potentially higher value or, you know, bulky waste or that sort of thing before you roll out to the, the big services.

Even with governor, if I text messaging, it’s still expensive.

So we’re looking at things like push notifications into an app being a much cheaper way of doing it.

Email’s obviously free and delivers pretty much similar benefits.

So that it’s pretty straightforward.

The, the other part of it procedurally, once you’ve got the e-mail address is to know what message you want to send.

So, you know, do you want to tell people every time you’ve collected their bin?

Perhaps not, but maybe you want to tell them if you changed their bin there.

Maybe you want to tell them if the truck was late, maybe we want to tell them if he contaminated.

I think one of the powerful ones would be to say get an e-mail or a text message to say we haven’t collected.

She’s been today because she contaminated it.

It’s like an electronic version of the swing ticket.

But you’re in charge of that conversation.

You’ve started it off and said This is why we didn’t empty your bin.

You already see that on the portal.

So if we went to log in to do a miss bin through our portal, it would say it was contaminated and there’d be no option to raise a miss bin.

But if you get in first, the message that, you know, strengthens it again.

And then we’ve had a question come through of what’s been the best resident engagement method the panel has seen for garden waste.

So I don’t know.

As a councillor Sally, you want to start and then you, Chairman Louise, can add in if they have anything.

Yeah, I think despite the fact that we did two sets of leaflets, it wasn’t the leaflets.

I actually think it was social media, yeah, basically social media was got.

The engagement on our social media posts was unbelievable.

Even if it was people swearing at us, we knew that they were paying attention to the the sort of information we’re giving.

So I’d say that was the best engagement we got, followed by the leaflets.

But then a lot of people denied ever seeing a leaflet even though they definitely arrived.

So but yeah, I think social media was, was the biggest engagement we got.

There’s, you’ve got lots of options and it’s not a particular garden waste one, but one of the, the, the best ones I saw many years ago, actually 10 years ago now, was we did a, it’s still there.

We did an app for Leeds called Leeds Bins, which is a, a really simple name for an app and they advertise it on roundabouts.

So just on, you know, when you’re stuck in traffic on the rush hour roundabouts, there were just little posts advertising Leeds Bins with the URL and that we, we know that drove a lot of traffic to download that app.

So it’s a, it’s a really dumb, simple thing to do, cost you virtually nothing, but it, it gets a lot of eyeballs.

From Auspice perspective, I can’t really comment on that.

But what I can say is by having a permit you will increase your sales because people are trying to keep up with the Joneses.

So I would say having a bright, colourful permit and really promoting that on, I’m assuming, social media.

That’s where I hear everything from my council.

So I can only talk from a residence point of view.

That’s how I see things.

And I know that you’re obviously sitting next to me, but your campaign was so good because it was so fresh and obvious.

And I think that the colours and everything were really engaging.

And I always recommend people to look at yours because I just think it was really good in terms of what a resident would see.

So that’s the only thing I can comment on really.

OK, perfect.

Thank you.

Tim, do you foresee any game changers for chargeable collection services from a tech perspective?

I’m not sure.

I’m not sure about game changing, sorry.

We’ve got to be out of it by 4.

I think there’s, there’s a lot of things that, you know, we, we, the councils are, are just behind on technology and they always have been and probably always will be.

But I think one of the things that we’ve got to change is the way we, we view how people are going to actually interact with the service.

So, you know, we’re even guilty of this.

You know, we think about people sitting at APC because we sit at PCs all day.

But actually, you know, the, the user experience doesn’t start at PC.

The user experience starts with I’m stood in the road in my dressing gate and wondering why my bin hasn’t been emptied or I’m mowing the lawn and I think bloody hell, I need to go on my service.

So actually I’m going to have my phone in my pocket.

Is anybody in the room taking Apple Pay or Google Pay through their websites?

No, I, we haven’t done 1 yet.

I really, really want to do Apple Pay because it just, it’s another bit of friction that goes out of the sales process because you have to go and find your credit card.

Well, I don’t need to do that.

I can just double click with my phone and pay and it’s it’s faster, it’s more secure, it’s simpler.

So, so why isn’t that happening?

I think, you know, there’s a lot more going to go into resident apps.

So I think that notifying people and then selling to them, it’s not overt selling because you’re not those kind of organisations, but it is selling because you you’re getting away from the old days of NI 14 where you avoided contact.

You’ve got to actually start trying to contact people now.

And there’s lots of and maybe Sally will do a tick tock.

And then I think it’s our last question, unless anyone has anything is can we send other council communications with the permit, IE comms for two for one postage cost.

Yeah.

And we actively suggest it.

And we’ve had quite a few different things happen.

We’ve had fostering campaigns go out with them.

We’ve had promotions for garden centres, anything really that you want to go in.

We’ve got the kit to enable us to pack it all in.

I’m not saying it’s going to be free, but you might as well make use of the postage cross, which is the biggest part of that and obviously if it’s relevant.

So yes, we can put anything in there.

Amazing.

Thank you so much for our Session 3 speakers.

A big round of applause for the panel.