Linden Homes: East Yorkshire Division

Divisional Support

Divisional support Linden Homes is an award-winning homebuilder, with an established reputation for delivering distinctive and diverse new homes within prime locations across the UK. The company’s desire for sustainable new housing developments has led to a longstanding working partnership with Reconomy, the UK’s leading provider of outsourced waste management services. In 2012, Linden Homes’ North Division formed a partnership agreement with Reconomy, who took responsibility for managing the disposal of all on-site construction waste.

In 2015, the acquisition of Shephard Homes by Linden Homes significantly added to their housing development portfolio. This resulted in the North Division being split into ‘West Yorkshire’ and ‘East Yorkshire’ in July 2016. Across both Yorkshire divisions, Reconomy continues to deliver ongoing waste management support to this day. Within East Yorkshire alone, support is provided to approximately 10 Linden Homes housebuilding sites per year, with each project typically lasting between 3 and 5 years.

Waste minimisation

All of Linden Homes’ East Yorkshire sites use waste performance as a benchmark for their housebuilding plot cost – this being the amount of waste generated when building each home. In the wake of rising waste disposal costs, Reconomy has tailored its service to help Linden Homes maintain a consistent plot cost. This has been achieved by regularly scrutinising waste performance during monthly meetings and quickly identifying sites with any anomalies that could impact on the division’s overall plot costs. These sites have then been prioritised for regular visits from Reconomy’s team of Site Liaison Officers (SLOs). During each visit the SLO follows a checklist to identify any areas where waste minimisation can be improved upon.

This has typically involved looking at the utilisation of skips to ensure they are leaving site correctly loaded to capacity. Where waste has been incorrectly segregated or improperly loaded, the SLO has subsequently carried out toolbox talks to improve the waste handling performance of site personnel. The SLO will also look to identify any damage to materials caused by poor storage and make suitable recommendations to reduce excess materials kept on site. In support of this, all site managers have been given access to Reconomy’s online portal, giving them full visibility of their waste data so performance can be closely monitored.

Additional services

In addition to the many waste streams typically generated on a housebuilding site, Reconomy has also overseen the disposal of other forms of waste. At site level, Reconomy has coordinated the emptying of septic tanks and arranged for the treatment of any soils that have been contaminated by minor fuel leaks caused during the refuelling of plant machinery. At Linden Homes’ East Yorkshire headquarters, Reconomy has also implemented an office and confidential waste disposal process to ensure that materials such as sensitive paperwork are destroyed in a safe and compliant manner. These services have proved invaluable, removing the need for Linden Homes to source specialist waste disposal contractors and freeing up site personnel to focus on other priorities.

Achieving results

Since forming a working partnership with Linden Homes’ North Division in 2012, Reconomy has helped to reduce housebuilding plot costs, making it one of Linden Homes’ best performing regions. Since achieving this initial reduction, plot costs for the division have remained consistently low. This has been achieved despite steadily increasing waste disposal costs, underlining the importance that good on-site waste minimisation practices can have. Thanks to the continued delivery of good on-site segregation and skip utilisation practices, in 2016 the newly formed Linden Homes East Yorkshire Division achieved an impressive 97% landfill diversion on all generated waste.