Case Study: North East Lincolnshire Council achieves seamless Direct Debit payments for waste collections with Bottomline

NELC Introduces Seamless Direct Debit Payments for Waste Collections

North East Lincolnshire Council operates a chargeable annual garden waste service used by more than 26,000 households and needed a more efficient, secure way for customers to sign up and pay. Although a Capita self-service portal already accepted card and PayPoint payments, previous attempts to introduce Direct Debit failed twice because of Service User Number (SUN) and AUDDIS compliance issues and missed the narrow March window to capture payments before the new service year.

Working with Bottomline and Capita’s Pay360, the council launched a secure Direct Debit mandate with bank-account validation, Direct Debit Guarantee notifications and confirmed payment/collection dates. The solution enabled over 4,000 recurring annual Direct Debit payments, reduced transaction costs, improved customer experience and visibility across the payment lifecycle (allowing proactive exception handling), and—thanks to Bottomline’s training and on‑standby support—met the critical go‑live deadline, becoming a model for other council services.

North East Lincolnshire Council

Carl Render

ICT Change and Information Manager