By WasteSignal · England, Scotland and Wales
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Measure the parts of the waste service that your business needs to understand and can support with evidence. Collection reliability, complete documents and unresolved problems are useful starting points. Define each measure before asking the supplier for a performance percentage.
A performance review also needs the current service scope. A supplier might collect one stream reliably while repeatedly missing another. An overall score can conceal that difference, particularly when several premises share an account.
The measures below are management suggestions for businesses in England, Scotland and Wales. They are not a government-prescribed set of waste supplier targets. Read the monitoring and supplier management guide alongside the relevant legal duties and the conditions of your particular arrangement.
What should a waste supplier performance review cover?
Start with the agreed service: originating premises, waste streams, expected collections and the parties carrying out the work. Add the period under review and any changes during it. Without that scope, figures from different months may describe different services.
Choose measures that lead to an action when performance changes. If you record document completeness, identify who requests missing information. If you track missed collections, agree who checks storage capacity and arranges the next suitable service.
Keep operational measures alongside a separate review of authorisation and duty of care concerns. A high collection-reliability score does not establish that the actual carrier or destination is appropriate. Equally, a missed visit does not by itself prove an environmental offence.
Use the supplier monitoring checklist for the checking questions. Your performance discussion can then focus on service evidence without making one percentage stand for every legal and commercial aspect of the relationship.
How do you measure collection reliability fairly?
Define what counts as a planned collection and what counts as completed. Decide how cancellations, bank holiday changes and additional visits will appear. Keep the original plan and the actual event distinguishable so a missed visit cannot disappear merely because the calendar was amended later.
A useful calculation might divide completed eligible collections by planned eligible collections for the same period. Label it as your chosen method and state exclusions. If you exclude a client cancellation, record the reason so both parties can reproduce the figure.
Separate a late collection from one that never happened. The effect on your business may differ depending on storage, waste properties and operating hours. A visit after closing might count as attendance in a vehicle log while leaving the collection unperformed.
Discuss repeated failures at the affected site or stream. A supplier completing many routine visits can still have a persistent problem at one location. The local pattern helps identify whether access instructions, vehicle suitability or scheduling needs attention.
Which records show whether a collection happened?
Compare supplier collection logs with site records and the relevant movement documents. An invoice can show a charge for a service without proving every planned transfer occurred. Ask what the supplier’s completed status means and what evidence supports it.
Where weights are used, establish whether they are measured per collection, estimated or allocated from a combined load. Preserve that basis in the report. A precise-looking monthly figure should not imply a separate weighing event that did not happen.
Read invoices and weighbridge tickets as waste records before using accounts data as your complete performance source. The document’s function matters, particularly where it supports a qualifying annual arrangement.
Investigate discrepancies with the people who attended or prepared the record. A practical review should identify whether the issue was the collection itself, the supplier’s status entry or your own filing. The remedy depends on which process failed.
How should you measure paperwork quality?
Check whether the required completed documents were received and whether their information matches the actual movement. You could record missing copies, incomplete descriptions and unexplained party differences separately, so the supplier knows what needs correcting.
GOV.UK’s business waste guidance explains the ordinary transfer-note requirements and season-ticket records. Your internal target for receiving copies is a business control; it should not be presented as a universal legal grace period for completing the transfer documentation.
Distinguish obtaining an existing completed copy from repairing a record that was never properly completed. A supplier resending a PDF may resolve an access problem. It does not necessarily resolve an absent signature or an inaccurate description at the original handover.
Use missing or incorrect waste transfer notes when that distinction arises. Track whether the underlying problem recurs after correction, rather than awarding full credit whenever the supplier eventually sends a document.
Should authorisation checks receive a performance score?
Keep the actual authorisation conclusion visible in words. A point-based system can obscure a serious issue if good service scores compensate for an unanswered permission question. Readers need to know which activity and forthcoming collections are affected.
Section 3.2 of the England and Wales duty of care code says you must not give waste to or take it from someone suspected of lacking an appropriate permit or registered exemption, or breaching its conditions. Report suspected illegal activity or breaches to the relevant regulator.
That requirement should not wait for a poor overall performance score or the next scheduled meeting. Identify the evidence and act on the affected arrangement. A missing search result needs investigation and does not automatically establish a breach.
For Scotland, use the current producer code. Record the applicable national basis and your response. Avoid applying an England and Wales paragraph as though its precise wording were a separate Scottish statutory rule.
How do complaints and response times help?
Give each complaint a date, affected collection or service, description and owner. Separate acknowledgement from resolution. An immediate automated reply can confirm receipt while the practical problem remains outstanding for several days.
Agree what closed means. For a missed visit, it might require a completed replacement collection and confirmation that the site is manageable. For a documentation issue, it might require the correct record and an explanation of how the recurring error will be prevented.
Record the response time your contract or internal process uses, with any relevant exclusions. Government waste guidance does not prescribe one customer-service response target for every supplier. Choose an expectation that reflects your arrangement and explain it to both parties.
Look at repeated causes as well as the number of complaints. A decline can mean an improvement, but it can also mean staff stopped reporting problems. Ask local colleagues about unresolved issues and check a sample of recorded outcomes before drawing a conclusion.
Can you measure contamination or rejected loads?
Track what was rejected, the reason given and the evidence supporting that reason. Identify whether the problem arose from your waste presentation, the agreed description, the supplier’s handling or an unresolved classification question. Avoid allocating blame from a short rejection code alone.
Compare similar streams and collection methods. A site processing unfamiliar material may need investigation that a routine packaging stream does not. Record changes in waste composition or production that affect comparability between periods.
The official waste classification guidance explains the technical framework. Performance pressure should not lead either party to choose a more convenient classification or relabel a rejected material without a proper assessment.
Read rejected waste load paperwork for following the changed movement. Keep the operational measure connected to the actual outcome, including any onward movement and documents, rather than marking the case complete when a credit note arrives.
How should you assess recycling and recovery figures?
Ask what the figure measures and which evidence supports it. A supplier-wide recycling percentage, a receiving facility’s output estimate and your customer’s allocated share answer different questions. Give the scope and method alongside the number.
Keep recycling distinct from other recovery. The England and Wales duty of care code describes these different operations. A recovery total should not be repeated as a recycling total without checking its composition.
Ask how mixed loads, residual outputs and changes in receiving routes are treated. If the report uses allocation, state that clearly. Do not label an allocated estimate as the measured treatment outcome of a particular collection.
Use building a waste audit trail to assess the evidence behind a route. If you plan to publish environmental claims, review whether the underlying information supports the proposed wording and obtain appropriate advice where needed.
Which cost measures are useful at a review?
Compare the agreed service with the charges actually made. Separate collection fees, container hire and additional services where they differ. A lower invoice may reflect fewer completed collections or a different waste volume, rather than a better price for the same service.
Record price and quantity changes with their effective dates. Check how estimated weights, minimum charges and rejected loads affect the calculation. Ask for explanations where the invoice cannot be reconciled with the collection records.
Keep commercial disagreements in their own context. A disputed charge does not establish an authorisation problem. An attractive price also does not excuse a concern about the legality or suitability of the route.
Bring the evidence into the contract renewal review. That allows the buyer to compare the cost of the actual service and proposed improvements, while the operational team addresses current collection and storage needs.
How should you compare sites or reporting periods?
Use comparable measures and explain differences in scope. A location with daily collections creates a different number of opportunities for failure from one with a monthly service. Raw counts alone may give an unfair impression of the underlying reliability.
Show the denominator where you use percentages. One missing record out of a handful of collections should not be presented in the same way as many missing records across a large service without explaining the volumes involved.
Separate a changed method from a changed outcome. If the supplier begins weighing loads individually, a new tonnage pattern may reflect improved measurement. Keep the previous basis visible so the report does not imply a production change that has not been established.
Review outliers with the site team. An unusually high rejection figure may reveal a genuine problem, a one-off clearance or a recording error. Record the explanation and supporting evidence before using the figure in a supplier-wide judgement.
What if the supplier’s data and your records disagree?
Select the affected collections and compare their references, dates and premises. Ask each party what its record represents. A supplier’s transport log may record an arrival, while your site log records whether waste was handed over; both can be accurate about different events.
Retain the original values while investigating. When an error is confirmed, record the correction and its effect on the performance figure. This lets colleagues reproduce the result and understand why the revised report differs from the first version.
Give unresolved differences a clear status. You can report a provisional measure with its limitations where useful, but avoid using an uncertain figure as a definitive basis for sanctions or public claims. Refer contractual or legal disputes for appropriate advice.
Agree an improved source for future periods. If both parties repeatedly reconcile manually, a clearer collection reference or export field may solve the administrative problem. Test the revised method on real records before treating the discrepancy as closed.
What would a simple performance review look like?
Imagine a fictional office business reviewing its quarterly collection service. It records planned visits and actual handovers, then checks a sample of completed notes. The supplier reports all visits complete, but two site entries show that access was unavailable.
The parties establish that the vehicle attended but no collection took place. The report distinguishes attendance from completed handover and records the replacement collections. They agree a revised access contact and check whether the next visits use it successfully.
The same review finds several document exports missing attachments. The supplier supplies the complete existing records and changes the export instructions. The business checks the next batch to see whether the problem recurs.
Neither finding establishes an environmental offence by itself. The review still includes separate current carrier and destination checks. If those raise a relevant suspicion, the business addresses the affected transfers immediately under the applicable duty of care guidance.
How do you turn measurements into improvements?
Keep a definition beside each chosen measure. For paperwork completeness, it might specify which documents are included, how the sample was selected and whether an unresolved correction counts as incomplete. For collections, it should identify the event being counted and the treatment of cancellations.
Record who prepares the figure and who checks it. If a supplier produces the monthly summary, your business can compare a sample with its own collection evidence. This gives the review a repeatable basis without requiring staff to reconstruct every movement at each meeting.
When the definition changes, explain the date and reason. Retain the previous method with earlier reports. Otherwise, an apparent improvement might result from excluding a troublesome stream or changing the definition of completed, while the underlying service remains the same.
Choose a small number of actions that address the supported causes. Name the supplier contact and your own owner, state the expected evidence of completion and agree when to check it. Avoid closing an action solely because a meeting took place.
Keep current concerns outside the routine timetable where necessary. A serious waste-management issue needs attention when discovered. Your quarterly review date is an administrative arrangement and should not delay an action required before the next transfer.
Use waste supplier monitoring reports to record the decisions and evidence. Preserve the measure definitions with the report so someone reviewing it later can distinguish a service improvement from a changed calculation.
At the following meeting, examine whether the action worked. If missed visits continue despite revised access arrangements, reopen the cause instead of recording the same promise again. Keep the remaining task and its owner visible in the next reporting period.