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Laying the foundations for better local public services

Digitising bulk waste collections

Contents:

  1. Project timeline

This project, led by North Tyneside Council, will conduct an investigation into the use of machine learning to assess the variables of bulk waste collection. The objective is to develop a streamlined digital process that ensures the right service is in place to collect various types of large waste, reducing failure demand and the time taken for users to make a request.

If successful, this will help overcome barriers posed by set collection days and reduce the incidence of fly tipping.

A large section of the discovery will focus input from end users to explore 3 objectives:

  • is there user interest?
  • what technologies are the most suitable?
  • does the data agree the project is viable?

Project details

Phase: Discovery

Funding granted: £93,500

Partners: North Tyneside Council (Lead Council), Newcastle Council and Gateshead Council

Project links

Project timeline

March 2023

The project is awarded £93,500 in funding through Round 6 of the Local Digital Fund to begin a discovery phase

May 2023

The project team made good use of their clinic with Local Digital, during which Local Digital helped the team to refine their focus and offered advice on how to attract the best candidates for their user researcher position. Alongside this, they are continuing to pull together the wider project team.

The project team has been refining their job description for the user researcher role, and are aiming to submit it through the HR process in the upcoming weeks. They have also reached out to their engagement team to seek guidance on how to gather feedback from the public effectively.

In the next sprint, their focus will be on exploring various options for public consultation and advancing their recruitment process.

June 2023

In this sprint, the North Tyneside project team completed their final draft of the user researcher job description based on guidance from Local Digital.

Two members of the team successfully completed the Agile and Digital training course which has proved very useful. The team is also beginning to collaborate with their engagement colleagues to understand the audience they should target and engage with.

In the upcoming sprint, they plan to finalise their initial data assessment to identify any additional information they may need to collect. If any additional data is required, the team is prepared to introduce methods to gather it.

July 2023

The project team’s initial data assessment is taking slightly longer than expected. They are currently analysing the data to gain an understanding of what has been included in the collection so far. The goal is to determine if any crucial information is missing that needs to be added to progress with the project.

In the upcoming sprint, the team plans to finalise the data set and make any adjustments based on their findings.

August 2023

During the previous sprint, the team had an interesting and productive initial benefits conversation with the Local Digital team. The  project team are currently focused on finalising their job pack to recruit a user researcher. In addition, the team is making progress in the discussions and assessment of project benefits. After these conversations, they will be taking a closer look at their data collection methods to ensure they have accurate and appropriate data available.