Streetscene at Woking Borough Council
In April 2003 Serco commenced a groundbreaking new environmental services partnership with Woking BC. Different and exciting, it marked a break from conventional task-based contracting. At that point a new and flexible outcomebased partnership was born.
Serco provides a wide range of streetscene services including all street cleaning and landscaping activities across the borough. Our payment for these services is determined by customer satisfaction, as measured through regular telephone surveys of local council taxpayers. Serco has designed this approach to payment to demonstrate the company’s total commitment to putting the needs of the communities we serve first. If they are not happy with the service we provide, we don’t get paid. It’s as simple as that.
The contract is flexible and so are our work programmes. This means we can direct local resources according to where and when they are most needed. A novel and different idea at the time, our approach marks a huge departure from old-fashioned task-based contacts that saw providers delivering services to rigid schedules, regardless of whether the street needed cleaning or the grass needed cutting.
Serco’s best operating practice approach to service delivery has enabled us to deliver best-in-class performance in streetscene. Serco delivers upper quartile BVPI performance across a full range of government key performance indicators. Customer satisfaction has also increased year on year, against a trend of declining satisfaction nationally.
When you have a good idea, it’s great to see it take shape. Serco now has over £220m in streetscene business where our payment is linked to customer satisfaction and the partnership contract has been recognised by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) as an example of best practice in streetscene. Serco is taking this community participation further by recruiting Community Champions who have become our eyes and ears on the ground. They take digital photos of environmental problems such as fly tipping sites, graffiti and littering. Here’s the neat part. They use a camera fitted with an integral GPS device, which transmits the exact location of the problem to Serco’s service helpdesk. This data is then relayed in real time to our rapid response team who know exactly where to go to clean up the problem.
Don’t just take our word for it…
“Still breaking new ground and bringing new ideas to the fore, with a clear willingness to deliver as part of a partnership approach” Dave Ward, Environmental Services Manager, Woking BC Over 80% of people believe Serco’s Community Champions scheme is a great idea, with 20% prepared to give up time to support the programme.
- Streetscene at Woking (PDF) (264Kb, June 2006) [PDF, 264 KB]