Case Study: Newcastle Under Lyme

The Newcastle Under Lyme Borough Council collections service, which covers recycling, domestic, garden and food waste collections, prioritises the health and well-being of its staff. To improve the measures in place to protect their waste collection operatives, the local authority investigated options to implement new safety technology but kept in mind that it would be important to keep their staff on board with the changes and ensure they fully understood the benefits to them.

Contel and service management systems providers, Bartec Municipal Technologies have developed a joined-up partnership; providing a streamlined and data- driven solution to enhance their customers’ operational efficiency and safety standards. Their shared understanding and appreciation of the importance of a ‘service first’ approach has led them to evolve their solutions to maximise the benefit realised by their customers.

Newcastle Under Lyme Borough Council were already aware of the established partnership between Contel, Bartec and Biffa, through the Staffordshire Waste Officers Group – primarily via Lichfield Council, who were the first to implement the solution in their business. Hearing the benefits, and with health and safety at the top of their own agenda, Newcastle Under Lyme decided it was the right solution for them.

Julie Copestake, Recycling and Waste Service Manager explains that the local authority already had CCTV fitted on their fleet of vehicles, but that “half the fleet was fitted with an older-technology, legacy system which didn’t provide live data and relied on us to download the data when the vehicles came back into the depot after a shift, which can be time-consuming and often unreliable.”

Julie adds, “We’ve had multiple camera systems fitted to the vehicles for the past 12 years, but the technology has moved on, so we recognised that we needed to refresh our systems to bring it up to date.”

Julie continues by adding that “upgrading the camera hardware to IP69 rated, from IP67 was also important to us.”

Once the new solution was established, Newcastle Under Lyme Borough Council was able to benefit from automated health and safety monitoring reviews being produced by the system. The Contel data is plugged into the Bartec back office, providing an evidence-driven safety and compliance assessment, presented via a reporting suite, with the ability to drill down to the required granularity by vehicle or by service. Julie explains that “the system is still evolving to meet our needs and the needs of other local authorities as they implement the joined-up solution.”

It was important to the Local Authority to ensure the users of the system, both in the office and the crews were involved in the implementation. Rather than having a system that made the staff feel like they were being monitored, it instead is being recognised as a method of protecting them and promoting their safety.

Julie explains that “when we had a service change, we needed to review all the risk assessments and safe systems of work and the information was easily available to us. The crews understand that we’re not just monitoring behaviours, we’re identifying areas that require improvement for their safety and that of the community in which we operate. When the system picks something up that isn’t already identified in our safe systems of work, we can make changes for the better or invest in training.”

Julie adds “It’s about encouraging behaviour change and also recognising and celebrating what we do well.”

Commenting on the benefits of the new cameras that Contel have provided, Julie explains that “technology has really moved on, and the new Contel daylight cameras provide us with a new level of quality and clarity.”

Julie also highlights the level of service provided by Contel saying that “Contel pride themselves on the customer service and they have been very proactive in resolving any issues during the implementation.”

Addressing the operational benefits being realised by the team, Julie says that “it has highlighted areas that we know that we can all improve on.” Julie adds to this be saying that “we now have a base line to build on from a health and safety perspective, enabling us to easily identify where we are doing things well, and also areas where we are perhaps doing not so well.”

“Now that we have a live camera system, it means that we can use the footage and information to inform our training programme and manage and improve our safe systems of working. We can investigate things quickly and we encourage our crews and drivers to report incidents of dangerous driving and/or other unsafe situations, which is making them feel safer as they go about their jobs.”

“Now we’ve implemented the same system across the fleet, it is the first time we have achieved this level of standardisation,” says Julie.

Commenting on the relationship with Contel, Julie notes that there may be scope for investigating reversing radar safety systems with Contel and working with them on other innovative projects going forward.

“It does what it says on the tin. Contel’s cameras are delivering decent quality images, giving us instant access to the information we need, enabling us to monitor and protect our crews to a level we have never achieved before.”

Julie adds that “it feels like a very positive step for us and that we’ve achieved a huge step forward in a relatively short space of time – something that we never would have been able to achieve by ourselves, internally. I think the partnership working between Contel, Bartec and Biffa has created a very streamlined approach.”