LGA survey suggests concerns are deepening
A new survey by the Local Government Association (LGA) reveals one in four councils in England say they are likely to have to apply for emergency government bailout agreements to avoid bankruptcy in 2025/26 and 2026/27.
England’s councils are already facing a funding black hole of more than £2 billion next year. However, the LGA survey shows the crisis is deepening with more councils being pushed towards the financial cliff-edge and likely to need Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) from the Government to help them meet the requirement to balance their finances.
Like all other organisations and businesses, councils continue to face inflation and wage pressures. However, they are increasingly finding it impossible to balance the books as budgets are inadequate for funding the growing demand for services.
For social care authorities, the areas where the problems are most acute are children’s and adult social care, special educational needs and disabilities, home-to-school transport and temporary accommodation.
It is accepted that councils with a greater degree of urbanisation have a different focus when compared with those that govern more rural districts. This was reflected in the survey with shire districts positioning homelessness (85%) and waste services (82%) as their top concerns.
Maximising budgets through effective use of technology
With initiatives like Simpler Recycling, Deposit Return Schemes (DRS), and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) all in various stages of development or set to launch, considerable investment is required to increase the amount of recyclables collected and minimise waste.
One of the chief sources of concern on the minds of many municipal environmental professionals is the question of how to re-organise to best deliver waste services in line with the evolving mandates set by central government.
It is clear that technology is a factor that exerts an enormous influence. Essentially, the councils that are best able to keep in step with evolving waste management requirements are going to be those that deploy and utilise technology most effectively.
Whitespace specialises in helping UK councils to obtain maximum value from tech investment. This increases efficiency, maximising the return from available budgets.
Key components and principles include:
- Cloud software running on standard devices, and minimising the need for large scale investment in on-premise hardware and software.
- Implementing API-based integration to avoid data silos, and allowing interoperability with other software applications.
- Core technology that centralises data and which is the foundation for a range of ‘out of the box’ solutions, or modified for specific purposes at relatively low cost.
Using this approach enables LAs to make significant strides in creating efficiency for their existing services as well as laying the foundation for meeting foreseeable demands.
More effective tailored waste management solutions
Whitespace provides a number of technologies that form the building blocks of turnkey solutions. Our expertise and the inherent flexibility of core technologies enables a wide range of deployment scenarios to be accommodated, and our solutions are tailored to meet the specific needs of each local authority and their waste management delivery partners.
- Waste Management Software – Manage all aspects of collection rounds such as sending round sheets directly to crew in-cab devices, easy route planning, real-time communication, and notifications for information sharing between office teams and waste collection crews. Record exceptions such as missed collections and contamination, and integration with existing software such as Customer Relationship Management System (CRM).
- Mobile In-Cab Applications – In-cab and mobile work management, including templates for daily vehicle checks, generation and automatic distribution of waste collection rounds to crews, managing ad-hoc services, viewing progress of collections in real time, and switching rounds to different crews.
- Analytics & Reporting Dashboard – Analytics and real time data visualisation, including data consolidation from multiple sources into a single dashboard, interactive access, search and reporting across all council Whitespace waste and environmental data, mobile device data capture, and checking performance against KPIs.
- Waste Management Telematics – For tracking vehicles, observing driving behaviour, estimating time of arrival, communicating directly with drivers, navigating to job locations and running a more fuel efficient fleet.
- Route Planning and Optimisation – Reduces time and mileage by identifying the most efficient route to destinations, increases productivity, enables workloads to be balanced across crews, reduces fuel costs and CO2 emissions.
- Resident Mobile App – The all-in-one mobile app that lets councils improve resident satisfaction by communicating and engaging to provide upcoming waste collection information and reminders of waste bin types. Allows issues to be reported such as ASB, enables data collection and integration with CRM, delivers local news feeds and supports council branding.
- Whitespace Resident Portal – Seamless integration with council websites for providing resident self-service. This enables residents to check waste collection schedules and correct waste for each bin, booking and paying for ad hoc services online, like garden waste, reporting issues such as potholes, graffiti and fly-tipping, sending direct feedback, data collection for CRM integration and support for council branding.
Tackle your toughest waste management challenges with Whitespace
Whitespace is more than a technology company specialising in providing waste management solutions. Our vision is for us to be a catalyst, helping the public sector to do a better job of waste management, furthering the cause of environmental protection.
Whitespace is the UK’s partner of choice for technology solutions that address the logistical problems of waste management. To find out more about Whitespace Municipal Waste Management solutions, please get in touch by calling us on +44 (0)1483 231 650 or emailing us at info@whitespacews.com.