In the past ten years Gateshead (www.gateshead.gov.uk) has undergone a transformation and now promotes itself as the place in the North East to live, learn, work and have fun. Gateshead Council has secured over £500million to develop cultural projects - including the now-famous Angel of the North - which have been the catalyst for cultural renaissance in the area, creating new jobs, employment and pride in a borough hit hard by the decline of traditional industries.

The Borough Council which covers a population of 204,000 and employs around 10,500 staff has won awards for its transport carbon reduction policy and is working with two other local authorities as part of the The South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership which aims to find more cost-effective and carbon friendly way of reducing landfill and promoting recycling.

Tim Deveaux is Gateshead Council's Local Agenda 21 Officer. The concept of Local Agenda 21 began in 1987 at a meeting of world leaders in Norway, where they agreed that the way forward for the planet was to adopt policies of 'sustainable development'.

"At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, these ideas were further developed under the term Local Agenda 21, recognising the need to work out ways of doing things for sustainable living into the 21st century," Tim says. Each country represented was urged to develop an LA21 strategy with the agenda set by the community itself.

"It hasn't entirely caught on as a brand, though it has caught on in terms of its principles," Tim adds. "Putting people at the centre of things, consulting them on the way forward, making them decide on what the agenda is for the their environment, focussing on things like biodiversity, energy conservation, transport, waste management - integrating sustainability into community life."

Which are the sectors responsible for major parts of the Council's carbon footprint?

"We don't know for definite yet as we are in the process of assessing a carbon baseline through the Carbon Trust's Local Authority Carbon Management Programme at the moment, but my guess is that it would be schools, sports and leisure services and the Civic Centre itself which is at the top of the list for energy consumption."

How have you tried to tackle emissions in these areas?

"So far it's mainly been through the Local Agenda 21 strategy and one of the objectives of that was energy conservation. It's through this programme that we've tried to reduce our emissions. But I think the Local Authority Carbon Management Programme will focus us on areas that we need to tackle very seriously and enable us to provide evidence-based material to map out what has to be done."

What are the major obstacles you've encountered?

"It's always resources. It's actually finding the capital to fund a lot of the things that have to be done, particularly with regards to tackling energy efficiency in a concerted programme. For example, many of the boilers in council run buildings are fairly new but heating controls, insulation of piping, voltage control - that sort of thing - require specific funds.

"We had an initial audit by the Carbon Trust and found that the payback time for outlay on some items was really very encouraging - in one instance just over .64 of a year! The average payback time showed that expenditure would be recouped in energy (not to mention carbon) savings over two or three years, so really it's a no-brainer. If we can find the funds, within a very short period we would get it back."

What has been your most successful low carbon initiative so far and what made it so?

"Although not specifically labelled as carbon reduction measures, two efforts that do in fact affect emissions are worth mentioning. The first is in the council's approach to its own buildings. We are investing in and replacing the lighting in the Civic Centre with low energy, low emission lighting - the first such overhaul in 24 years. This will make a big difference to the amount of electricity we use.

"The second one is called the Gateshead Warm Zone which is mainly a device for attacking fuel poverty but it does have, obviously, the benefit of reducing C02 emissions from peoples' homes. This programme began in 2006 and it's a five-year roll-out. It involves upgrading houses in terms of cavity wall insulation and loft insulation. The initial business plan was to cover between 35-40,000 homes over five year period. To date I believe there have been about 20,000 measures taken."

Tell us about what are you working on right now?

"Well, the internal launch of the Local Authority Carbon Management Programme takes place very soon so I've been working on organising that day, ensuring that everybody who needs to be there will be and that we identify what our priorities are and what our targets are going to be for the next four to five years. "One of these will include our Community Centres where we hope to reach out to stakeholders - employees and members of the community - with the double hit of reducing costs and carbon emissions from which everybody will benefit."

Which government agencies have helped the Council tackle carbon emissions?

"The Carbon Trust and the Energy Savings Trust. Evidently another area of sizeable emissions is the council's transport fleet and a great deal of successful work has been done in this area. [Gateshead Council won the EST's Overall Fleet Hero Award in 2006 for cutting Co2 emissions by 300 tonnes per year and saving, through diver training and the use of green fuel additives to traditional diesel, some £77,000 in fuel costs.]

"However, we haven't had a concerted carbon emissions strategy in the past and the new Programme needs to bring all that together.

"We've rightly been praised for our approach to transport emissions but for the future, my concern is that we don't put all our carbon reduction eggs in one basket by following a fixed technological line. Our aim for the future must be to reduce carbon emissions by using the best available technology.

"For example, we have in the past said that we want to increase the bio-diesel component of our fleet fuel from five per cent to 10 per cent and gradually increase that over the next few years. That has proved to be a little bit premature because we're now not sure whether bio-diesel is the way forward. I think we need to keep an open mind about the technology we're going to use over the next five or 10 years. I feel we should focus on reducing carbon emissions rather than a particular technology to achieve this. Things are changing all the time."

How could central government do more to help local and regional councils reduce their footprint?

"I don't like repeating myself, but it's by making capital funding easier to access! It's very difficult. There's a lot of competing priorities within local authorities and obtaining money for carbon reduction measures isn't easy.

"One example: there's a programme called Midas which gives advice to businesses about reducing their carbon footprint. Now that's not available for local authorities. We have to find the money and resources to analyse our own carbon emissions. The Local Authority Carbon Management Programme provides a certain number of energy audits but we'd like to undertake them for all our buildings because that could provide the overall evidence base that will persuade managers and stakeholders of what needs to be achieved."

What advice would you give to someone taking on a role similar to yours?

"Be persistent. Gather evidence and be prepared to spend a lot of time doing so. Also, it's necessary to decide on what the drivers are for each stakeholder - each has different problems and perceptions - and to try and use the information you have to address their needs and the way they look at things."

Customer Services - Low Carbon Leaders?

With the long-term shift from face-to-face contact towards online and phone-based systems, it can be argued that customer services operations have already made significant reductions to carbon footprints across all industry sectors.

What more could customer services do to reduce the emissions of their day to day operations? And could they take leading role in shaping the wider emissions reduction strategies of the organizations they serve?

Companies such as BT are addressing the first of these questions by exploring the possibilities of low carbon call centres. “The main BT Contact Centre in Glasgow is a good example, it was purpose-built with a large atrium to minimise the requirement for artificial lighting,” says the Customer Contact Association (CCA), a trade body representing the UK industry.

There are some obvious efficiencies to be gained by managing energy use more effectively. For example, Vodafone aims to reduce the day-to-day energy consumption of its offices and call centres by around 10% by using air conditioning systems and lighting more carefully.

An “on the spot” survey of senior managers and executives attending the 2007 CCA Annual Convention found that 53% of respondents already have a green policy in place, though many, unprompted, expressed concerns about the quality of the current policy. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly a quarter didn’t know if their organisation had such a policy.

Some 41% had a named individual responsible for green issues, while 26% had no such person and 33% were uncertain if such a role existed in their business. Looking ahead, the survey indicates that green issues are increasingly likely to impact on future purchasing decisions, with 44% planning to “go green” in their contact centre within the next 12 months and a further 20% in the next three years.

From tender processes to ‘Generation Y’ The call centre industry will soon see carbon emissions become part of agreements with some clients, suggests Natalie Portman, managing director of Calcom Group, a provider of customer services operations for large companies. “This is something we’re just starting to see as part of the tender process for these large companies,” she says. “Companies may be asked if they have a low carbon policy in place as part of wider questions about environmental policies, and what their strategy is for engaging with employees to reduce emissions in future,” she says.

At present, many corporate call centres don’t have carbon reduction policies tailored specifically for them, being subject to wider corporate policies, says Portman. “This may change, because in other areas they do. For example, companies often have human resources specialist to work with its call centres, or IT specialists, for example,” she says.

In future, call centres are likely to look more closely at carbon reduction policies as part of their strategy for attracting and retaining staff, Portman suggests. “One of the things we’re seeing is the attempt to improve staff retention by encouraging them to become more aware of their responsibilities to the communities they work in, and helping them to participate more. I’ve recently been doing some research on the so-called ‘Generation Y’, and this suggests that increasingly employees will expect this kind of involvement, and new ways of working,” she says.

Changing employee behaviour could have a significant impact on a call centre’s carbon footprint. Recent estimates suggest that the UK's contact centre professionals could be generating more than 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year through the daily commute to and from work. “One of the striking things about many call centres is the size of the car park. Companies could think about encouraging greater use of public transport, or a company bus if public transport is difficult,” says Portman. Staff may also feel safer in their own cars, and companies could consider improving security arrangements to make alternatives more attractive, she says.

A more radical alternative is to consider flexible working arrangements, allowing staff to work from home, for example. “There are some situations where that really isn’t an option – where staff are hugely dependent on specialist technology, or for security reasons for example,” she says. Industry estimates put the number of outsourced home-based call centre staff at 47,000 worldwide, which is expected to rise to 224,000 by 2012. In the UK, the Automobile Association is a significant user of home-working call centre agents, with around 300 home-based agents taking calls from motorists and dealing with insurance quotes.

The pros and cons of flexible working

Yet more than 50% of UK centres refuse to consider the option of home-working according to research carried out in 2008 by the Professional Planning Forum, an independent industry body. When asked why this was so, the responses highlighted concerns about managing staff effectively and efficiently, and staff ability to focus adequately on work. “Long time to fully train”, and “Requests for hours within the ‘school run’, poor evening cover delivered” were typical, says the research.

By contrast, parts of the public sector have a track record of being more open to flexible working. This proved to be a key advantage for the contact centre of Gloucestershire County Council during the catastrophic floods of July 2007. The contact centre, made up of around 70 operators plus managers, received about 2,000 calls on the first day of the floods alone, according to manager Glynis Morris.

Rising water levels forced the contact centre staff to evacuate to buildings in Chippenham and Worcester, and even the local radio station, Radio Gloucester. Other staff continued working from home. Having the infrastructure for flexible working helped the contact centre to be one of the few parts of the council to continue working throughout, says manager Glynis Morris.

Buoyed by its success Gloucestershire’s customer services arm has become a key player in the council’s emissions reduction strategy, providing advice to other council departments on how to manage flexible working, and manage the peaks and troughs of customer demand more efficiently, she says.

Key Questions:

• Are call centre staff properly briefed about our low carbon policies?
• How can we use customer service data to improve our overall efficiency?
• How are we helping our call centre staff reduce their emissions?