North Somerset Council and North Somerset Environment receive iESE Award for the Service Change Project.
We are delighted to announce that North Somerset Council and North Somerset Environment have been awarded with an iESE Certificate of Excellence for our Service Change Project.
The iESE awards recognise and celebrate the outstanding work of councils, public bodies, and their partners in improving services and delivering better outcomes of communities. iESE, established by local authorities as a shared resource for the sector, works with organisations across the UK to review, remodel and reinvent public services, helping generate efficiency improvements, savings and stronger customer outcomes. Over the past decade and a half iESE has supported transformation programmes that have saved clients more than £1 billion and championed best practice across public service delivery.
To be recognised by iESE is a testament to the incredibly hard work which North Somerset Council and North Somerset Environment Company’s colleagues have put into the Service Change Project which launched in 2025. A trailblazer in the industry, our Service Change project has really pushed the limits of what we can achieve and our team alongside our colleagues at North Somerset Council have delivered the project to an extremely high and successful standard. We are so proud that iESE have recognised and appreciated the work we have done to improve the Recycling Service in North Somerset, being the first district in the country to collect soft plastics at kerbside, joining many of our neighbouring districts in moving from two weekly to three weekly residual collections, replacing all of our Recycling fleet as well as introducing new telematics in the cabs of the brand new fleet.
A key element of the Service Change Project was a comprehensive modernisation of NSEC’s operational infrastructure. This included the full replacement of our existing operational fleet with a brand new Romaquip fleet, delivering improved reliability, enhanced safety features and lower emissions to support both our performance and environmental goals. Alongside the fleet renewal, all new vehicles were fitted with advanced telematics technology provided by CMS, giving real-time performance data, improved compliance monitoring and greater visibility of fleet operations. In preparation for the change from two weekly to three weekly residual collections, members of our team undertook a detailed route optimisation exercise for our three-weekly collection rounds using Routeware’s route optimisation software, enabling smarter scheduling, reduced mileage and greater efficiency while maintaining high levels of customer service across North Somerset. With our change to three weekly collections, we became the first district in the United Kingdom to begin collecting Soft Plastics at Kerbside, something which will become mandatory for all councils in the next few years. Once collected all of our soft plastics remain in the UK and will head up to Monoworld to be recycled and repurposed.
This would not have been possible without the outstanding collaboration of our residents in North Somerset who have adapted to the changes superbly and has made the transaction period a lot smoother. As the project begins to come to an end we will continue to find new innovative ways to enhance the Recycling Service in the district alongside our other services in the future.
