Working in partnership, creating success

As you may have heard we work a little differently here at Govtech. We like to become one with our customers, forming a partnership where we are seen as an extension of their team. Over the last few months, apart from the everyday automation routine, we’ve worked on other projects with new and existing customers to help them create even more success. Here are a couple of stories where we’ve been delighted to have helped been a part of.

Sandwell Council’s first fully automated SPD review

Historically, Sandwell Council had always outsourced its single person discount review caseload, as the workload associated with dealing with the responses outweighed their limited resources. But this time they incorporated our fully automated discount review service within webCAPTURE, so they were able to realise even further benefits and savings from taking the SPD review inhouse.

Sandwell identified over 5000 of their existing SPD caseloads for review, and claimants were given 5-weeks to confirm or cancel their entitlement. All the responses were completed online, and fully automated within webCAPTURE, without any team intervention.

1477 SPDs were cancelled automatically as a result of this review; with a saving of an estimated £500,000. This has saved a substantial amount of revenue as well as resource from this one review alone. Sandwell found:

“The process you have provided us with is simple and effective and the support we've been given, as you can see, is very much appreciated. Your help and support have made this easier to implement than we thought it might be and it gives us a platform for carrying out reviews in the future.” 

Carl Jones, Revenues and Benefits Operations Manager, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

The project has been extremely successful, so much so that Sandwell is already planning in their next review; and most importantly, they have no plans to outsource its SPD review ever again.

Supporting Salford City Council’s social value

During Salford City Council’s ‘Get Online Week’, we were thrilled to have been asked to help support the City’s digital inclusion through their corporate social values. For this we delivered two informative talks on subject matters that are not only important to us but are important to them. These webinars reflected the key skills which our business has had to master, and we’re committed to sharing those important skills and disciplines. 

Our Head of Service Design and Support Alan Hince delivered the first talk on 'Data Protection / UK GDPR Awareness'; something that he knows inside out, as Alan is our Data Protection Officer. Over 12 local businesses from Salford’s community joined the webinar, with instant feedback returned to the council:

“That was really good! Alan's information was really clear with plenty of examples.”

Our second session on ‘Cyber Security & Safety Awareness’ was delivered by our Technical Director Mark Hanson; not only does he look after our own here at Govtech, but he has a real passion for helping both businesses and individuals keep secure from online threats. His informative talk went down a storm, and the number of questions raised by participants showed the level of interest and attention held on this subject.

We’re fortunate that here at Govtech we have a varied team of highly skilled professionals, who each have their own area of expertise, who are only too willing to transfer their knowledge onto others. It’s central to our customer to help improve the skills and sustainability of their local SMEs and VCSEs, and we could tell from the audience engagement how valuable it was to them too. Not only have we been able to help the council, but we’ve made a real difference in helping its local community – each extremely rewarding!

A different approach to Council Tax Reduction as a Discount with Lichfield District Council

With the continuous reduction of the admin support grant, Lichfield District Council looked at ways they could make the administration of their Council Tax reduction scheme more efficient and effective. Lichfield has a banded working age CTR scheme, each band attracting a different % discount. Now with most working age claimants in receipt of Universal Credit, like lots of other councils, Lichfield was struggling to keep up with the workload generated from their daily DWP UC files; making it even more time consuming to process their CTR, as naturally this fits more into their Council Tax system than their Benefits system.

So we got our heads together, and by working in partnership we’ve designed an online application form to capture the information required to make an assessment of the household’s weekly income. By using this assessment we then automate the award of a discount relevant to the income band in the Council Tax system – only when a household’s income crosses an income band is the Council Tax discount amended automatically. 

Problem solved!

We’re also into the next phase of development, where we will use the data from the DWP daily UC files to identify a change in income band and automatically change the level of discount awarded in the Council Tax system – making it even more efficient and effective.

Although a newly formed partnership, one we can see reaching new heights.

We become a part of your team

Simply, we want to solve local councils’ problems. We know automation works and we ensure we continuously work closely with our customers to ensure they are maximising the service, as well as looking into other areas where automation can help lessen their workload.

Our customers are the most important stakeholders in our business. Together we create success and we’re delighted to have been a part of these initiatives.