Serco contract go live

Welwyn Hatfield Council’s new Streetscene Partnership is to go live on Saturday 1 April 2006. Streetscene services will be provided by Serco, the council’s service partner, for a range of activities including refuse and recycling collections, landscaping and street cleaning.

Community Champions, local volunteers who want to be more involved in improving their environment, will be issued with PDA devices with built in digital cameras linked directly to Serco’s service helpdesk.
They will use the cameras to take pictures of problems in the area, such as graffiti, fly-tipping and litter.

The partnership follows an extensive review of current arrangements and a year long procurement process where the council scrutinised proposals from some of the UK’s leading providers of streetscene and environmental services, and was cemented on Monday 13 March 2006 at a signing ceremony in the Council Chamber at Campus West.

A unique feature of the partnership is regular customer satisfaction surveys, where every quarter over 350 local people will be contacted by telephone and asked their views on how good the services are and what improvements can be made.

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