The principles are being developed by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and follow a recommendation made by a Communities and Local Government select committee report in 2007, which criticised the inconsistency of council household waste collection systems.
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frequency, reliability, regularity and consistency
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a commitment to recycling
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clean streets
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sensitivity to circumstance
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customer service.
Importantly, they are intended to offer councils flexibility in service design whilst not being so general that they become meaningless to householders.
Writing in an update for the National Association of Waste Disposal Officers, WRAP explained: “A set of principles have been drafted centred on 5 key themes that emerged from consumer research and comments have been received from LARAC and the LGA.
“The Voluntary Service Commitment, key findings from consumer research and guidance on complying with the commitment are to be made available to early adopters in late July. A wider launch will be in the autumn,” it added.
Frequency
While the principles are still being finalised, research unveiled by WRAP at the Futuresource conference and exhibition in London Docklands last month indicated that the frequency of waste and recycling collections was the most important factor in determining whether a collection service was deemed to be “good”.
In a telephone survey of 2,000 adults, 23% immediately identified the frequency of collections as the most crucial element, compared to 20% who said that reliability was very important. Other factors, such as the cleanliness of streets, behaviour of collection crews, and service efficiency featured less prominently.
The survey also indicated that services were most likely to be deemed unpopular because of a limited number of materials being collected, or if collections were infrequent.
Pointing to a link between popularity and weekly collections, WRAP said: “79% of those with weekly refuse collections were satisfied with the frequency of their service compared with 61% of those with fortnightly collections.”
It added: “58% of respondents said they were satisfied with the number of materials collected for recycling: significantly lower than overall levels of satisfaction and service provision.”
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