SEP 2025

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A partnership approach to waste prevention and recycling 

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Annex 1: Surrey Environment Partnership Work Programme

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Objectives

The 2024-25 SEP work programme has nine objectives which will deliver against the priorities of SEP 2025:

1. Develop and deliver initiatives to reduce all residual waste, with a particular focus on food waste.
2. Develop and deliver initiatives aimed at increasing participation in food waste recycling.
3. Develop and deliver initiatives aimed at reducing the contamination of dry mixed recycling (DMR) to help increase the quantity and quality that is recycled.
4. Educate and encourage residents and their children to take action to reduce, reuse and recycle quality material.
5. Deliver SEP 2025 and support authorities to respond to upcoming changes in national policy and strategy.
6. Further improve our use of data and insight in order to better inform decision-making and communication with partners and residents.
7. Ensure partners are kept informed and the reputation of SEP continues to be protected and developed.
8. Manage the partnership effectively to ensure activities are delivered with appropriate governance and oversight.
9. Develop and maintain links with other groups and initiatives to ensure that our work remains relevant in the wider context.

Programme of activity

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For each objective we have detailed below the planned activities for 2024-25 and how they deliver against or enable the SEP 2025 priorities. Also included is how success will be measured for each objective and the input required from partners to ensure successful delivery.

Objective 1: Develop and deliver initiatives to reduce residual waste, with a particular focus on food waste

Activity – Waste reduction incentive scheme – Rethink Waste

• Description – Continuation of the countywide Rethink Waste scheme for a further 12 months with the aim of building the number of subscribers to maximise value for money and engage with as many residents as possible.
• SEP 2025 priority – 1, 2, 8 & 9
• How will success be measured? Number of households signed up to the scheme – target 24,091 properties; Engagement of those signed up, e.g., participation in activities; Waste tonnage reduction; Schools’ participation.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Use communication toolkits to share information and messages about the scheme on council channels.
  Budget – £64,974

Objective 2: Develop and deliver initiatives aimed at increasing participation in food waste recycling

Activity – Food recycling at flats

• Description – To meet the mandatory requirement of providing food waste recycling to all properties by 1st April 2026, introduce food recycling at flats where there is currently no collection. Including providing bins, signage, liners and communication materials to engage residents in the new service; Continuing to trial the use of bin housing units at sites that cannot accommodate a standard food bin. The need to roll these out more widely is subject to confirmation from Defra on any exemptions to the requirement for all properties to have access to a service, such as flats above shops and other difficult to reach properties.
• SEP 2025 priority – 3
• How will success be measured? Number of properties a new food waste service is provided to; Spot checking quantities in bins to assess participation in new services; Comparison of food quantities between bin housing units and standard food bins
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Provide the funding granted by Defra to cover capital costs of bins; Provide site details; Review and approval of communication materials; Carry out delivery of food bins and caddies; Work with contractor / DSO supervisors to plan new collection routes; Resolve any collection problems; Briefing of local customer service team and members; Provide safe storage of bins / associated items.
• Budget – £140,000 to roll out food waste collections; £70,000 to trial and introduce food housing units; Total: £210,000

Activity – Food waste recycling targeted interventions

• Description – Further roll out of interventions to increase food waste recycling. This initially focused on the five areas with the lowest capture rate in the most recent composition analysis but will move into other areas for 2024-25. The interventions involve applying no food waste stickers to household rubbish bins and delivering an accompanying postcard highlighting the benefits of food waste recycling.
• SEP 2025 priority – 3
• How will success be measured? Increase in participation; Increase in tonnage
• Partner responsibilities – All participating D&Bs: Discussion and agreement of data to be used / areas to target; Review and approval of intervention materials; Briefing of local customer service team and members; Provision of any caddies or food bins requested
• Budget – £50,000

Activity – ‘No food waste’ stickers

• Description – Continue project to put in place an ongoing process to sticker all new and replacement residual bins with a ‘no food waste’ message, to encourage participation in food waste recycling.
• SEP 2025 priority – 1 & 3
• How will success be measured? Successful implementation of stickering processes and number of stickers applied.
• Partner responsibilities – All applicable partners: Implement process at depots/with contractors to apply stickers.
• Budget – £5,000

Objective 3: Develop and deliver initiatives aimed at increasing the quality and quantity of dry mixed recycling

Activity – Contamination reduction at flats

• Description – Delivering measures to reduce the contamination of communal recycling bins, at sites where food waste services are being rolled out, where it is needed to be able to successfully introduce food waste. This work will only be done to support food waste rollouts due to the priority of meeting the deadline for food waste collections from all properties by 1st April 2026. Including reviewing bin capacity, introducing reduced aperture lids and locks or providing one-off replacements of broken locks, updating signage and providing communication materials to encourage residents to recycle the right items.
• SEP 2025 priority – 4
• How will success be measured? Comparison of contamination levels before and after, to assess improvements in material quality.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Review and approval of communication materials; Carry out delivery of DMR bins; Carry out crew training and ongoing monitoring of actions to lock bins; Resolve any collection problems; Briefing of local customer service team and members; Provide safe storage of bins / associated items.
• Budget – £19,000

Activity – Letters from a MRF worker

• Description – Using an approach that was successfully used by Keep Britain Tidy, to trial delivering targeted letters to 3 or 4 collection rounds with high levels of contamination, with a letter written from the perspective of a MRF worker.
• SEP 2025 priority – 4
• How will success be measured? Reduction in contamination for selected rounds, identified through indicators such as reduction in rejected loads, reduction in number of bins recorded as contaminated or reduction in contamination reported in MRF samples.
• Partner responsibilities – All participating D&Bs: Identification of high contamination collection rounds; Review and approval of letters and postcards; Briefing of local customer service team and members; Provide available contamination data to assess effectiveness.
• Budget – £5,000

Objective 4: Educate and encourage residents and their children to take action to reduce, reuse and recycle quality material

Activity – Countywide communications campaign

• Description – Year-long communications campaign badged under the theme ‘Own Your Impact’. To include the following specific campaign phases to support SEP’s priority areas: 1 x contamination / − 1 x food waste reduction / 1 x festive season recycling and reduction / 1 x food waste recycling; Ongoing communications activity will also encourage and motivate residents to prevent or reduce waste, including home composting, single-use plastics and to reuse or repair where possible. This will link to national awareness days/weeks and events where relevant; Support and promotion of national WRAP initiatives: Recycle Week / Food Waste Action Week (reduction focus).
• SEP 2025 priority – 1, 2, 3 & 4
• How will success be measured? Independent research to evaluate the impact of the campaign with residents. Digital channel metrics including website visits and social media reach and engagements (e.g., shares, retweets, video views and comments).
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Use campaign toolkits to share messages with residents and staff through own channels; Share posts/tweets from SEP social media channels.
• Budget – £56,000 (including independent evaluation at £6,000)

Activity – Surrey Recycles search tool and app

• Description – Ongoing management, updates and improvements to the search tool and app which aim to educate residents and specifically reduce contamination of dry mixed recycling bins; Communications to encourage and increase usage of the tool and app undertaken as part of the Own Your Impact campaign and Google Search promotion undertaken as part of the service guides work, to encourage residents to check how to dispose of an item in the absence of them receiving a posted guide this year.
• SEP 2025 priority – 1, 2, 3 & 4
• How will success be measured? Increase in the number of searches and downloads of the Surrey Recycles search tool and app.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Continuing to have the search tool embedded on own websites; Promotion of the search tool and app; Providing updates when services or acceptance criteria changes.
• Budget – £11,500

Activity – Service guides

• Description – Creation of an annual recycling guide tailored for each area but based on a consistent template. Plus inclusion of calendars where requested by D&Bs. PDF versions produced for use on websites for residents to download and print themselves. Small numbers to be printed for D&Bs to provide to residents on request and/or placed in community locations. Google Search promotion of the Surrey Recycles search tool, to encourage residents to check how to dispose of an item in the absence of them receiving a posted guide this year.
• SEP 2025 priority – 1, 3, & 4
• How will success be measured? The independent research to evaluate the impact of the campaign will also ask about residents’ knowledge of what can be recycled, this can be compared to previous years to see if the absence of posting guides to all households this year has had an influence; Increase in the number of searches and downloads of the Surrey Recycles search tool and app, in the absence of a posted guide this year.
• Partner responsibilities – All D&Bs: Providing content for guides; Reviewing and signing off content.
• Budget – £11,000

Activity – SEP digital channels

• Description – Ongoing management, development and promotion of the SEP website and social media channels on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and YouTube. Budget also covers subscriptions to a photo library for design use, film editing and animation tools, social media management system and e-newsletter software.
• SEP 2025 priority – 1, 2, 3 & 4
• How will success be measured? Digital metrics including website page views, social media reach and engagements (likes/ shares/ comments/ retweets etc) and video views.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: − Adding relevant SEP website links to own websites; Sharing content from SEP channels on own channels.
• Budget – £8,000

Activity – Schools resources

• Description – Promotion of SEP website educational resources to primary school teachers.
• SEP 2025 priority – 1, 2, 3 & 4
• How will success be measured? Website visits and downloads of resources; Feedback from teachers
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Promotion of the resources.
• Budget – £0

Objective 5: Deliver SEP 2025 and support authorities to respond to upcoming changes in national policy and strategy

Activity – Respond to new policy and consultation proposals

• Description – Consider implications arising from the Government’s forthcoming statutory guidance and secondary legislation for the Simpler Recycling reforms, and clarification on new burdens funding to deliver these. Continue to engage with Defra on the development of the other Collection and Packaging Reforms (CPR); Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging, particularly on the forthcoming effective and efficient guidance and local authority payments, and the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for drinks containers; Keep partners informed on the latest with the above CPR;  Produce and submit partnership responses to consultations on proposed national policy (current and new thinking) linked to recycling and waste.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Updates provided at each partnership meeting on the latest situation with emerging policy including producing separate briefing notes where required; Agree and submit responses to consultations by the deadlines.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Review and input into SEP responses where necessary; Produce individual response where required using the SEP responses as a template.
• Budget – £0

Activity – SEP delivery plans

• Description – Review delivery of 2023-24 plans and the process for monitoring and reporting on progress; Support all partners with developing plans for 2025-26 and monitoring the activities in these plans.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Effective and efficient production of the delivery plans; and timely monitoring of performance against the plans.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: To engage in the development of their respective delivery / improvement plans; To ensure delivery of the actions within their respective delivery / improvement plans; To support the timely monitoring of performances against the plans.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Review and update SEP 2025

• Description – Update and extend SEP 2025 (SEP 2027 or SEP 2028) – taking us to a point where the collection and packaging reforms are established. The longer-term Surrey Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy to be developed thereafter.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Clear plan created for updating existing strategy.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: – To provide direction and feedback on plans as they develop
• Budget – £0

Activity – Fleet Decarbonisation plan – Phase 2

• Description – Building on the work that Cenex did last year on emissions and cost modelling for waste collections vehicles look to scope a next phase of work with interested authorities, which could include understanding more about electric vehicle infrastructure, carrying out depot surveys, creating knowledge sharing opportunities and upskilling officers and members.
• SEP 2025 priority – 5
• How will success be measured? Scope for the next phase and approach including funding for delivering this agreed with interested authorities.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: – To meet with JWS to understand more about a next phase and feedback whether they want to be involved and if so seek to agree an approach.
• Budget – £0 (any work agreed to be funded via individual contributions from councils)

Objective 6: Further improve our use of data and insight in order to better inform decision-making and communication with partners and residents

Activity – Performance reporting

• Description – Use up to date data to provide analysis and insights to current trends and performance against targets, including recycling performance, emissions and contract performance. Produce quarterly performance reports for SEP members and officers.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Members and officers are well informed regarding strategic and operational performance. Strategic decision-making processes are based on a robust and transparent evidence base.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Review performance reports and provide feedback on format; Help identify opportunities for performance improvement.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Data management

• Description – Management of the SEP waste data system, including contract management and managing the supply of weighbridge data; Management of third-party contractor data so that performance reporting incorporates up to date data regarding materials collected by third parties..
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Data gathering from all parties is centralised; Performance data is available in a timely manner.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Support the introduction of new processes and reporting data issues.
• Budget – £30,000

Activity – Recycling in Surrey report

• Description – Creation of an online report and infographic highlighting stats and facts about Surrey’s recycling and waste, including what happens to it. The aim is to increase the proportion of waste that is recycled by giving residents’ confidence in the processes and systems used to recycle it, and tips on how to increase the quality and quantity of their recycling; Communications activity to share the report findings with residents and encourage them to recycle more.
• SEP 2025 priority – 3 & 4
• How will success be measured? Resident engagement with the report and communications activity (e.g., website visits, social media engagements); The independent research to evaluate the impact of the campaign will also ask about residents’ knowledge of what happens to Surrey’s waste. Any changes in understanding will be assessed by comparing to last year’s results.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Promotion of the report/sharing of communications; Surrey County Council: Help with responding to media requests relating to waste disposal.
• Budget – £2,000

Objective 7: Ensure partners are kept informed and the reputation of SEP continues to be protected and developed

Activity – Protecting and building the reputation of SEP

• Description – Respond to media enquiries from local and trade media, drafting responses and liaising with partners if appropriate; Generate coverage in key trade media (local Surrey media engagement will be undertaken as part of the Own Your Impact campaign); Identify, draft and submit entries for key award schemes to highlight the work being done in Surrey.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Positive media coverage; Nominations for awards; Involvement in industry/Government panels.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Provide information for media enquiries if required; Share positive news stories about SEP.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Keeping partners informed

• Description – Email updates detailing progress, outcomes and upcoming activities in the SEP programme; Creation of Environment Matters email newsletter and distribution to all members and senior officers in partner authorities.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Partner feedback.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: − Share information with  internal stakeholders.
• Budget – £0

Objective 8: Manage the partnership effectively to ensure activities are delivered with appropriate governance and oversight

Activity – SEP governance

• Description – Agenda planning in consultation with SEP Member and Officer Chairs; Administration of all the SEP member and officer meetings, including booking meeting venues, dispatch of papers and minute taking.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Smooth running of partnership governance processes.
• Partner responsibilities – Attendance at relevant meetings.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Financial management

• Description – Monthly budget monitoring processes and production of quarterly reports for partners; Administration of Surrey waste financial mechanisms payments and administration of recycling credits payments for organisations in the Surrey (furniture) re-use network; Identification of potential savings opportunities, service efficiencies and budget reductions.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Timely and accurate reports available for partners to review; Payments are made in a timely manner.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: To invoice for services within appropriate timescales to enable effective and efficient budget management.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Programme management

• Description – Manage the SEP work programme for 24-25 by administering a process to plan and design projects and other work that the partnership has agreed to; Monitor and report against progress with delivery to SEP partners on a regular basis; Develop the work programme for 25-26.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Ensuring projects and other work have an agreed plan to work from; Providing accurate and informative updates on a regular basis.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Input into planning and help delivery of projects and other work where required; Review reports and ask for additional information where necessary.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Review SEP delivery model

• Description – Review the partnership model through which the SEP strategy and work programme is delivered in order to ensure it is fit for purpose and value for money going forwards, taking into account factors such as national policy direction and future funding streams.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Impartial review of current partnership delivery model has taken place to inform the shape of future partnership delivery model. .
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Proactively engage with review process; Provide honest feedback on current arrangements.
• Budget – £0

Objective 9: Develop and maintain links with other groups and initiatives to ensure that our work remains relevant in the wider context

Activity – Fly-tipping Enforcement Group

• Description – Provide administration support to the Enforcement Group, which is made up of officers from each Surrey authority.
• SEP 2025 priority – 8
• How will success be measured? Partners are kept up to date with what is happening across Surrey and issues can be dealt with as they arise. .
• Partner responsibilities – All partners – relevant officers to attend meetings.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Waste industry groups

• Description – Attend meetings and monitor updates from groups such as ADEPT, South East Waste Partnership Managers, NAWDO and LARAC.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Good relationships built with industry and authority colleagues; Insights and intelligence gained from industry experts.
• Partner responsibilities – None.
• Budget – £0

Activity – Surrey Comms Group

• Description – Attend meetings to share details of SEP work programme and keep informed about other countywide communications work being undertaken; Share toolkits for upcoming SEP activities via Surrey Comms Group for partner communications teams to use.
• SEP 2025 priority – Enabler
• How will success be measured? Use of toolkits/ sharing of messages by partner communications teams.
• Partner responsibilities – All partners: Encourage communications teams to support and share SEP messages.
• Budget – £0

Budget summary

Activity Budget

• Waste reduction incentive scheme £64,974
• Food recycling at flats* £210,000
• Food waste targeted interventions £50,000
• No food waste stickers £5,000
• Letters from a MRF worker £5,000
• Contamination reduction at flats** £19,000
• Countywide communications campaign £56,000
• Search tool & app £11,500
• Service guides £11,000
• SEP digital channels £8,000
• Data management £30,000
• Recycling in Surrey report £2,000
• Total excluding capital costs £243,474
• Grand total £472,474

*New Burdens capital grant funding from Defra, supplemented by SCC capital funding where required

**SCC capital funding

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