Morrison Sets Gold Standard For Tidy Businesses In Gateshead

Morrison Facilities Services has become one of only two organisations in the North East to attain the Gold Award in the Gateshead Council Business Tidy scheme. The other is its client, the Gateshead Housing Company.

Launched in 2007, the councils Business Tidy awards aim to encourage businesses and organisations to keep their premises and surrounding areas clean, giving them the chance to help make Gateshead a cleaner, greener and safer place.

Over 80 different business and organisations in the Gateshead area signed up to the scheme. As well as local businesses national organisations such as English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation have also signed up.

The council provides businesses with help to explore new ways to recycle waste and support to find the right organisations to take away their rubbish responsibly.

Gary Watson, Morrisons safety, health and environmental manager in Gateshead, explained: When the scheme was launched by Gateshead Council in 2007 Morrison Facilities Services wanted to become part of the scheme to emphasise our continued commitment to the Gateshead area. Our environment is our residents environment and playing our part to keep it clean and tidy is good for everyone.

In order to achieve the gold award Morrison first had to attain the bronze and silver awards. To achieve the bronze award organisations must sign a trade refuse agreement with a responsible private contractor which holds a waste carriers Certificate of Registration.

Among other things the agreement states that refuse can only be put out for collection at a time allocated by Gateshead Council or a registered waste collection contractor, not before. The business must also have enough suitable space for waste storage between collections. In addition, businesses have to ensure all waste disposal documentation is kept for inspection for a minimum of two years.

To achieve a silver award Morrison had first to ensure that it had achieved the bronze award. The next step was to recycle as much of its rubbish as possible.

Gary said: Once we had achieved the silver award the next logical step was to go for gold. We support a number of neighbourhood community activities such as taking part in or sponsoring community clean-ups. We organised local estate clean ups in a number of areas in which we work for Gateshead Homes including the HallGarth, Elizabethville and Highfield estates.

I mentioned that we had attained the silver award at a partnership meeting with our client Gateshead Housing Company and discovered that it had also joined the scheme independently of us. Now we have also achieved the gold award, making us the only two organisations to have achieved that standard.

Morrison Facilities Services is delivering maintenance and repairs worth £40 million to 23,000 homes owned by Gateshead Council. This includes significant improvements such as fitting new bathrooms, kitchens and windows to bring homes up to the governments Decent Homes Standard.