services was low. An in-depth review led to the borough making a strategic decision to progressively bring back the provision of services in-house including purchasing its own vehicle fleet run by its own management and staff.
An early arrival was now Head of Environmental Services, John Wheatley, an engaging Geordie with a great deal of hands-on experience across the waste industry. Today, he is Hackney’s waste services champion and his office is adorned with the certificates for excellence and service best practice for what has been achieved. Sitting closely alongside Wheatley is Corporate Fleet Manager, Norman Harding, who arrived in 2007 and is himself well known and experienced in the sector.
“It is all about achieving best possible utilisation of the borough’s fleet assets,” said Norman. “Hackney now owns and operates almost 500 vehicles in its fleet.
"Importantly, outright ownership of most of the vehicle fleet enables us to accurately manage operational demands with phased fleet replacement – all to ensure that we deliver the highest quality service. The waste and environmental services side of Hackney’s fleet currently stands at over 160 vehicles. providing an absolute 24/7, 365-day service.”
An interesting exception to this outright ownership strategy is with the fleet’s 59 electric vehicles being operated. As
Norman pointed out: “Quite simply, we made the logical decision to lease our electric vehicles because the technology is changing and developing so fast that we do not want to have an asset liability for a fixed term when developments may have moved on within the operating life of the vehicle. But we have to be as futureproof as possible.”
“We knew we had to deal with the poor public perception of services at the start,” added John, “and we have successfully improved that reputation year on year ever since. This is in no small part down to the parallel decision to engage a directly employed workforce with full local authority terms and conditions, including pensions. The borough can now boast a highly professional, motivated and inclusive workforce – which takes pride in the services that it provides for its residents. And while the move was accompanied by an increase in direct labour costs, the borough has still achieved very significant savings in overall costs of service provision.”
Hackney’s example has been running now for almost 20 years and it has proved to be highly successful. Looking to the future both John and Norman are optimistic. They have a 10-year fleet replacement programme which this year will have seen the arrival of the Boughton-equipped skips and hooks on Scania chassis. And then to follow, there are seven truck mounted sweepers, 12 compact sweepers, a street washer, a chassis mounted
Outright ownership of most of the vehicle fleet enables us to accurately manage operational demands with phased fleet replacement – all to ensure that we deliver the highest quality service."
crane, three 18-tonne RCVs and four 7.5-tonne food waste trucks, scheduled to be delivered before March this year. 20 RCVs and a combination gully/jetter are programmed for delivery next year, making the whole HGV fleet Euro VI, ULEZ and DVS compliant.
Just listening to John and Norman, it is clear that Hackney is a borough with a tangible passion for delivering quality services and it has proved that effective in-house asset and fleet management is key to delivering that, as well as those sought after economies and savings.
Head of Environmental Services, John Wheatley (left); Transport Manager, Emma Kirkpatrick and Corporate Fleet Manager, Norman Harding (right)
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