Managing Director Christmas Message
Stuart Jellings, MD at NSEC
As the year reaches its conclusion it’s a fantastic time to look back on a very successful 2024 for the business. We are reaching our 4th anniversary of trading in 2025, a great achievement for everyone connected to NSEC and is a testament to the hard work everybody puts in each day. We would not have been able to achieve this without the constant support from our wonderful customers, suppliers and colleagues.
In July this year our Founding Director Brian Veale made the difficult decision to announce his retirement, ending a 40-year distinguished career. Brian set up camp as ‘NSEC Employee Number One’ in December 2020 and was NSEC’s only employee until I joined a week prior to commencements of operations. Brian was instrumental in setting up the governance of the company from opening bank accounts, setting up arrangements with over 150 suppliers and transferring 228 colleagues. He would be the first to be modest about everything NSEC have achieved and say it’s all about our team, which it is, but they couldn’t have been achieved without Brian as our leader. I hope you will all join me in wishing Brian and his family the best in his retirement and thank him for making the business what it is today. The legacy of NSEC and its founder will not go unforgotten.
An extremely busy start to 2024 saw us take on two mobilisation projects before May. We successfully won the contract to operate the Aisecome Way Transfer Station on behalf of North Somerset Council for the next 7 years. In addition to the handling of Residual, Bulky and Garden waste, NSEC were also successful in their bid to deliver the onward Haulage of the four Waste streams including food to various recycling and disposal locations across the South-West. The hard work from the client lead Colin Russell and members of our NSEC team allowed us to have a successful mobilisation and go live in March.
Our focus quickly moved to our next mobilisation project, the new Highways Cyclical and Reactive Maintenance Contract. This project had involved more than 24 months of lead in preparation since we submitted our initial bid during 2022. Over the course of Easter Weekend, we completed the handover with an incredible team effort from our new colleagues transferring and rest of the team at NSEC, North Somerset Council, contractors and suppliers to make sure we were ready to start on April 1st.
Throughout the year our Driver Training Academy has continued to grow from strength to strength. Our internal sponsorship scheme allowed for multiple individuals to pass their LGV Cat C, and we also started training emergency services drivers and supporting other local businesses with their training requirements.
In October we officially launched our new Event Services at the 41st Weston Beach Race. Our offering encompasses Cleansing, Litter Picking, Recycling & Waste Collections and Traffic Management for events in and Around North Somerset. We are already looking forward to a roster of events next year including the Portishead Carnival.
Ahead of 2025 we are now deep in the planning stages for the new household collections service change project which includes route optimisation changes and the introduction of three-weekly residual waste collections. A vigorous action plan has been drawn out and is underway to enable us to increase recycling rates and reduce the cost of service. This is coinciding with the new Simpler Recycling Legislation coming into effect in March for businesses which we’ve shaped our commercial recycling and waste collections services to deliver against.
As a final note I’d like also to give a huge thank you and gratitude to all of those who are continuing to work or support our business during the Christmas period to ensure our essential services are still running.
This appreciation is also replicated by our shareholder North Somerset Council who share thanks to all NSEC colleagues for their commitment to services in 2024.
It only remains to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and prosperous New Year as we look forward and positively to a successful 2025.
