Aldermaston Recycling Ltd is an established family business with more than 35 years’ experience in recycling and waste disposal. Based in Aldermaston, Berkshire we operate our own Licensed Waste Transfer Station using the latest waste separation systems and collect waste using our fuel-efficient transport fleet. My name is Barrie Wright, I am the Operations Manager responsible for our 32 fleet vehicles and I want to explain how our FORS accreditation is essential to our continuing success. 
For contractual reasons we became Bronze accredited and we soon realised that not only did our accreditation give us access to work, but it also showed us a simple route to demonstrate our road transport compliance.
During our first audit we were impressed by the professionalism, thoroughness and knowledge demonstrated by our auditor and this gave us confidence in the knowledge that our systems had been audited and approved.
Utilising the knowledge available through FORS, we were able to progress to Silver in November 2016. We have made great use of the tool box talks and general compliance information that FORS supplies as part of our registration and as our drivers are registered for on-line learning this encourages them to visit the FORS website when every they want.
Our Operations Manager (Barrie Wright) says, ‘our original Silver accreditation in November 2016 allowed the company access to contracts that were not accessible at Bronze level and this has been a brilliant boost for the company’s growth!’
In 2013, our Compliance Manager became a FORS Practitioner and we have definitely used the knowledge she gained through these workshops within the company and she is looking forward to taking part in the Practitioners refresher course later this year.
Our drivers continue to benefit from the FORS driver training and all have enjoyed the Safe Urban Driving training available free of charge through FORS with the added bonus of 7 DCPC hours.
We have definitely seen a difference in the professionalism displayed by our drivers since becoming FORS accredited and our clients have commented on this also. We are proud that our company is being recognised for its good practice.
Barrie Wright says that ‘With more and more clients requesting the demonstration of higher standards of compliance and accreditation, we have found that our FORS Bronze
and Silver accreditations have allowed us to show our commitment to road safety and the environment.
We are proud to display our FORS logo and confident that this has gained us a reputation of the highest road safety standards amongst our clients and peers.
It has been 2 years since our first Silver accrediation and we are excited to be applying for Gold and hope that we are successful with our application. As a company, the FORS accreditation is essential to our business and our future growth is dependent on maintaining it. The brilliant thing about our continuing FORS accreditation, is that it gives us access to work that we would not be normally be able to tender for without!
Over the past 4 years, we have made extra efforts to ensure that our training programme focusses on Vulnerable Road User. In addition to the Safe Urban Driving training available through FORS, we have also used a FORS approved Vulnerable Road User training course as part of our driver CPC training programme.
In 2014, we introduced a compliance bonus, and this was aligned with tachograph infringements, PPE, weekly driver card downloads and speeding. After a severe increase in penalty charge notices being issued to the company in May 2018 we started to appeal the penalties received and to-date, we have had a 100% success rate.
We have seen a significant increase in penalty charge notices received and as a result our policy is to challenge whenever possible and appropriate. As a result, in the period April – June, we have had a 100% success rate in appeals.
| Number of Tachgraph infringements | Number of incidents | Number of PCNs | |
| 01/01/2017 to 31/12/2017 | 35 | 6 | 2 |
| 01/01/2018 to 31/12 2018 | 22 | 5 | 1 |
| Percentage increase or decrease | -37.14% | 16.66% | -50% |
- In addition to our 3 monthly licence and eye sight checks we have introduced a 3 monthly licence declaration that requests details of any health issues and problems a driver may have. The form also reminds them to check when taking medication prescribed or purchased that they are safe to drive and that these medications need to be reported to the company. This gives us the opportunity to check the details of the medication ourselves to ensure that it does not have any adverse effects when driving and these subjects are included in our driver induction.
- We recognise the shortage within the industry and have a problem in the past year with driver retention. As a result, we have introduced a new driver induction programme, where we give site, vehicle, on-the-job and classroom training to comply with the FORS standard and to ensure that we minimise our work-related road risk. We are hoping that this new strategy, will show our drivers that we invest in their future and we advise them on the possible careers path within the company.
- As an internal process, the have undertaken our own noise risk assessment and review. Our drivers have been issued with our Noise Pollution policy and operating procedures to ensure that the drivers are aware of their responsibilities.
- Aldermaston Recycling is aware of the impact our vehicles have on the public and environment. It is of great concern to us that our capital is in breach of the legal limits for NOX. Our vehicle choices are driven by our wish to decrease our impact on the environment. Our vehicle replacement policy is to upgrade our fleet whenever possible with lower emission vehicles. To ensure performance, except for 2 vehicles, the remainder of our fleet are Euro VI. The Euro V vehicles are specialist vehicles such as dust carts.
Further development of our waste transfer station continues, and we have placed an order for three excavators and a loading shovel as part of a new investment to improve customer service and raise productivity. These new machines will also ensure that we can work in a safe and eco-friendly environment.
Not only do we provide waste disposal and recycling services, but we also build and manufacture waste separation systems which we have installed in various waste transfer stations throughout London. We aim to recycle 100% of waste produced and we are constantly looking at ways of improving as we believe recycling is the way forward to a green cleaner environment.
Our goal has always been to concentrate on the important elements of road safety along with key management aspects of sustainability and environmental awareness and FORS has given us the tools to accomplish this. Our aim is to ensure our compliance covers all areas and with our telematics software data we are able measure the performance of our vehicles and drivers.
Aldermaston Recycling first became Bronze and Silver accredited to show our improvement and progression within the FORS structure. Our contracts are now requiring the higher level of accreditation and our re-accreditation will demonstrate to our staff, clients and competitors our continuing commitment to FORS and road safety.