Clean-up identity for Westminster

London’s Westminster City Council is on the hunt for a consultancy to rebrand its waste collection and cleansing service – the third largest in the UK.

The council has shortlisted several consultancies to create a name and identity for the service, after receiving credentials documents.

It is inviting between one and four groups to submit concepts and hopes to make an appointment by the middle of September, says Westminster City Council environment and leisure department project manager Debbie Hunter.

Identities will be tested by the public before being implemented in-house. The winning consultancy will also be briefed to create brand guidelines.

The news comes as the council considers a new contractor for its cleansing and waste collection service. It has received several applications from companies, including incumbent Onyx UK, to take on the job, says Hunter. A decision has not yet been made.

The design brief, which is understood to be in preparation, but not yet formalised, is to create a name and logo for the service. The identity will be applied widely to media including street furniture, vehicles, stationery and uniforms.

Hunter says that Westminster City Council will be dividing its cleansing service in to two divisions ‘to make it easier to manage’. It is believed this will result in the creation of two separate identities.

The identity is scheduled to be unveiled before Christmas, after which it will be gradually applied to different media. The council is hoping to have the contract in place by April 2003, but the identity will be rolled out before then, Hunter adds.

Westminster City Council, which incorporates London’s West End, generates more litter than any UK local authority and is visited by an estimated one million people a day.