Secure destruction for 81 NHS sites under one Trust

The East of England Community Health and Care NHS Trust provides health services to children and adults across Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, Norfolk, Peterborough, and Suffolk, serving a population of 3.5 million people.

As the trust serves such a vast area, it inevitably processes very high volumes of sensitive healthcare information. This requires a reliable supplier that can destroy such information securely in line with data protection legislation. When the NHS or other public sector organisations require large-scale services of this nature, companies can bid to win the work through a public tender process. Winning these bids has meant Shred Station has continued to supply confidential waste services to EECH&C and its two former trusts - NCH&C and CCS - for many years.

The challenge

The NHS is the biggest employer not just in the UK, but in the whole of Europe. Operating at a colossal scale, it is responsible for an estimated 4-5% of the UK’s carbon footprint. While focused on saving lives, it is also working hard to reduce this percentage. 

With an ambitious target to reduce its entire emissions profile 80% by 2036-2039 and to achieve net zero by 2045, the NHS is encouraging all trusts to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This includes emissions produced in supply chains. 

The EECH&C is enthusiastically committed to achieving the sustainability savings set out in its Green Plan.

The plan sets out “strategic ambitions and actions to become a greener, more responsible organisation.” 

Included in the plan is a commitment to increase sustainable buying. All contracts will include net-zero and social-value criteria, with all suppliers required to report emissions and have carbon reduction plans in place. We already do this at Shred Station, and our annual greenhouse gas house assessments and carbon reduction plan are available on our website for full transparency into our emission sources.

As a CarbonNeutral® certified company that operates a fleet of 100+ ultra-low-emission vehicles, recycles 100% of paper in the UK, and takes many other steps to reduce emissions, Shred Station is helping EECH&C achieve its Green Plan goals. But that isn’t all. Health information is classed as special category data and, crucially, must be destroyed securely.

EECH&C processes special category information about millions of people. So, in addition to finding a shredding provider that operates sustainably, the trust needs a reliable, fully accredited supplier that will work with each site to achieve total information security and the best value. Shred Station’s experience, independence, flexibility, and national coverage make this achievable. 

Our approach

CCS -

Upon being re-awarded the CCS’s confidential waste management contract in December 2023, Shred Station worked with CCS to create an action plan. This plan covers all sites under the Trust, ensuring each has a unique, flexible service tailored to its specific needs. For example:

• 49 of the sites continue to require a regular scheduled service for confidential paper. The collection schedules, however, vary for each site. For example, a hospital could have one building that generates a large amount of paper and requires weekly collections, but other buildings in the hospital may only need a two-weekly service. Small sites, like dental practices, may only need a service once a month. When we first won this contract, these details were captured as part of our standard mobilisation process. On contract re-award, these requirements were reassessed to optimise services and identify potential cost savings.
  

• Some sites require ad-hoc or one-off destruction requirements for non-paper items. This has, in the past, included everything from media storage devices to uniforms and even curtains. When these needs arise, we schedule these collections as part of our usual routing to avoid additional visits, reducing road miles (and therefore emissions) as well as costs.
  

• Some sites require on-site destruction, whereas the majority of sites prefer off-site destruction.
  

• We provide lockable confidential waste containers to the trust’s sites as part of the contract. Some sites prefer secure cabinets, some prefer 140-litre bins, and others prefer 240-litre bins. Each site is welcome to use whichever of our bins they prefer. 

When all sites were reassessed on contract award and all needs compiled into a master plan, Shred Station initiated any service amendments required at each of the sites. This helps to ensure each site receives the most cost-effective service. As we were the incumbent supplier when the new contract was issued, there was no need for us to liaise with another supplier to ensure all sites had confidential waste containers during the handover. This, however, would be something we would do if CCS had been using a different supplier before our contract began. 

Chris Leonard, Estates & Facilities Manager - Compliance & Technical at EECH&C (formerly under CCS), explains how Shred Station helps sustainably manage confidential materials handled by the Trust.

Being awarded the CCS contract wouldn’t have automatically meant Shred Station would be the preferred supplier for NCH&C or the later-formed EECH&C. While the same board governs the two trusts, they currently procure contracted services separately.

We are, however, proud to have been selected as NCH&C’s shredding service supplier for confidential waste for over 15 years. NCH&C was one of Shred Station’s first large NHS customers. 

NCH&C -

Shred Station has been servicing NCH&C for over 15 years, including 32 sites in Norfolk. We have an extremely positive working relationship.

A Contract Manager in the Estates and Facilities team at EECH&C (and formerly under NCH&C) has been working directly with one of our account managers for the 15+ years we have supplied the service.

Each site, like CCS, has specific requirements. We work with each site individually to ensure those requirements are met. For example:

• Each site has varying numbers of confidential waste containers, and some sites have different containers in different departments. For example, some hospitals have a combination of lockable cabinets, 240-litre bins, 660-litre bins, and some departments also use cable-tied sacks for instances where there are one-off additional volumes of shredding. In these cases, we will collect the sacks as part of our regular collections, so additional site visits are not required.
  

• The majority of the sites across the NCH&C Trust prefer our off-site shredding service for confidential paperwork. However, if the need for on-site shredding ever arises, our fleet of 100+ vehicles ensures we have ample mobile shredding trucks available to cater to these needs.

The results

Shred Station has been working successfully with CCS and NCH&C for a number of years. Following the combination of CCS and NCH&C, we look forward to an equally successful partnership with East of England Community Health and Care NHS Trust.

From April 2024 - March 2025, Shred Station collected and shredded 76,345kg of paper from CCS Trust, with 100% recycled at UK paper mills.

In the same time, we destroyed and recycled 85,920kg from NCH&C sites.

One of Shred Station’s Senior Account Managers handles both of these contracts. He commented:

With an average of 98.6% of collections completed on time, we are confident we can continue to provide a reliable, efficient, secure, and sustainable service to the trust’s sites for years to come.