Colchester Borough Council has embarked on a series of service reviews which focus on frontline services as well as making efficiencies, reports Lucille Curtis.
The drive for efficiencies is important, but any review of current services should also provide an opportunity to reflect on whether councils are meeting the changing needs of customers.
Colchester BC has developed fundamental service reviews (FSRs) which identify savings, while ensuring customers are at the centre of effective delivery.
Pam Donnelly, executive director at Colchester, explains: ‘Involving staff who currently provide the service, we start each review by mapping out the customer journey. This means understanding how our customers are currently using and accessing council services.'
She continues: ‘We also analyse their needs and expectations, via our customer insight tools. Touchstone allows us to speak directly with customers, and Mosaic helps us gain a better understanding of our customer profiles, in order to more effectively meet their needs.
‘This enables us to drive out any inefficiencies, improve our performance and, ultimately, deliver the far better outcomes our customers want and need.' Almost £1m worth of savings have been identified from just a couple of reviews, and these are front-facing services, where the majority of expenditure is rightly directed.
Although one of the primary aims of any review is ultimately efficiencies, it is not the only outcome. Each service review focuses on three core elements – customer excellence, effectiveness and efficiency.
The FSR model has emerged from the experiences of the environmental and protective services review, including planning, licensing, cemetery and crematorium, building control and environmental services in 2008/09. The review set out to shift the focus and profile of environmental and protective services from regulatory services to those which shape communities. A fundamental service review of housing services took place over nine months between January and October, 2009.
Key elements of the process included: more than 70 housing staff being consulted and involved in the planning 15 themed workshops undertaken, including internal and external stakeholders developing a final business case for political approval a small corporate support team being involved throughout the process and as part of the implementation
Savings of £450,000 over three years were identified by fundamentally reviewing how this service was delivered. Following political approval of the business case, implementation has started to enable a more efficient and responsive service.
Customers will be able to resolve queries more quickly and conveniently through the use of self-service tools on the website, or through the customer service centre – infopoint@Colchester – as well as via a multi-skilled team of advisers. Every customer's need will also be effectively assessed during a new ‘triage stage'. These changes are under way and will result in a staff reduction of around 25% by 2013. The proposals set out opportunities for staff to retrain and move into different jobs within the housing service or elsewhere within the council. The most recent review of revenues and benefits, undertaken over four months, from November 2009 to February 2010, will also fundamentally change the way the council delivers its services.
The economic downturn has seen workloads increase across the benefits service, with examples of activity increasing by 140% among certain customer types. The borough's population of around 181,000 is also expected to increase by 6% by 2011, and by 31% by 2021, which will create more demand for revenues and benefits services. The review aimed to identify ways to enhance the customer experience, save time, and improve performance.
It is the intention to build on and join up existing ICT options, to enable more than 80% of claims to be completed online. A range of contact methods will continue to be offered, together with supported help to complete the e-claim. The introduction of an online benefits calculator could also reduce claims by up to 26%, by eliminating non-qualifying claims. The business case aims to deliver the following over a phased implementation period: l improvement in benefit processing time (National indicator 181) from 15 days to five days.
an overall reduction in customer contacts by 65,500 a year – achieved by improved customer information, including education, channel management, insight, and communication – a positive impact on avoidable customer contact net savings of around £450,000.
The principles of the new service are to: move work to the front of the process, as this will remove delays for the customer, once they are into their ‘journey' with us to resolve a query or access a service improve the level, accessibility, quality and promptness of customer information encourage and support customers to use different access channels use a fraud risk assessment rating – high/medium/low – to ensure verification and evidence requirements are tailored to the customer join up the processes ‘end to end' across all services to make them as efficient and effective as possible, with an improved experience for the customer.
