ODS is celebrating another national success after winning the APSE Performance Networks Award 2025 in the category of ‘Best Performer in Street Cleansing’.
The award recognises councils and public service organisations that demonstrate excellence in frontline service delivery. For ODS, it marks a significant milestone in its ongoing commitment to doing good for Oxford and delivering strong value for money for residents.
This recognition also reflects improvements delivered through system thinking principles across Streetscene services, ensuring everything works together, not separately.
Earlier this year, ODS teams also undertook advanced Vanguard training, a professional development program that sees the organisation as a connected system and redesign processes to better meet customer needs, improve performance, and increase staff satisfaction.
The award further highlights the scale and impact of ODS’ work in keeping Oxford’s streets, parks and public spaces clean, safe and enjoyable. Each year the Streetscene team:
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handles over 5,000 public reports for issues such as fly-tipping, littering and other service requests
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empties more than 1,000 public litter bins a day, seven days a week
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cleans and maintains 21 public conveniences
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supports major city events including St Giles Fair, Oxford Half Marathon and the Cowley Road Carnival
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removes around 10,000 instances of graffiti annually
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manages 1,000 queries a year relating to abandoned vehicles and bikes, removing over 600 abandoned bikes last year; more than 400 were donated to charity
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looks after Oxford’s parks, green spaces and pavilions, as well as the historic Covered Market
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recycles around 800 tonnes of waste a year
Comments
“Well done ODS for achieving this award – yet another confirmation that the organisation is focused on providing top quality services. My thanks go to staff who made this possible. Yet again ODS are showing that they do good for Oxford.”
Councillor Nigel Chapman, Cabinet Member for Citizen Focused Services and Council Companies“ODS is committed to doing good for Oxford as well as providing value for money public services. We are so proud to receive this award that recognises the effort our team has put in over the last year.
“ODS also won an APSE Service Award in 2024 for Best Workforce Initiative, demonstrating our consistent commitment to high-performing public services.”
Paul Concannon, Chief Operating Officer at ODS“It is fantastic to see so many local authorities successfully utilising APSE’s benchmarking to develop their frontline services and achieve excellence. Congratulations to all winners and finalists.”
Mo Baines, APSE Chief Executive
The APSE Awards ceremony is a major event in the local government calendar, and in recent years has raised over £50,000 for Parkinson’s UK.
For more information about the APSE Awards, visit the Association for Public Service Excellence website.
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