Pendle Council Picks Up On Plain English Award For Recycling Materials

Pendle Council’s recycling materials have been recognised for being clear and well written in the annual Plain English Awards.

Judges for the Plain English Campaign praised the Council’s annual refuse and recycling calendar leaflet and a special recycling edition of the Council newspaper Pendle News.

Plain English Campaign founder and director Chrissie Maher said:
“Although recycling is not the most exciting of subjects, staff at Pendle Council have produced material that is well written and attractive.

“If residents need encouragement to read anything about recycling, this is the sort of material that will get their attention.”

Pendle Council is the only local authority to receive a Plain English Award this year.

Councillor John David, who represents recycling in Pendle, said:
“These documents go out to all households in Pendle and have a very important message: to encourage people to recycle as much as they can using the right recycling container.

“It’s vital that they are clear and easy to follow for all local residents, and our staff are committed to getting this right.

“It is very easy to talk in cliches and to use jargon. It is also very lazy and I am delighted that our staff take the extra trouble to write sensibly.”

The annual refuse and recycling calendar leaflet is distributed to all homes in Pendle.

This year’s leaflet has even more images to show clearly what can go into each recycling container.

It’s been designed taking into account feedback from residents who gave their views through our Waste & Recy-cling Focus Group.

Staff who work on the frontline, collecting Pendle’s refuse and recycling, give their input into how the leaflet can be improved each year too.

Waste & Recycling Co-ordinator Carole Taylor said:
“Every year we aim to improve our leaflet to make the leaflet meaningful to all residents and something that they will keep to refer to throughout the year.

“This year, to encourage residents to read the leaflet we have used a competition which tackles one of our big-gest problems of contamination in recycling loads.

“This was another suggestion that came out of our residents’ focus group – it’s great to be able to use their feed-back to keep on improving our recycling communications.”

This is the second time Pendle Council has been recognised for its commitment to communicating clearly using Plain English – the authority won a Plain English Award in 2011 for a range of its communication materials.