Cambridge City Council -
committed to service improvements and maximisation of system use
It’s a year since Cambridge City Council’s Chief Executive received one of the DWP
Housing and Council Tax Benefit Management Quarterly Report Letters, showing
Cambridge to be “not at Standard” for all of the reported Performance Measures. A
very gloomy way to start a New Year bearing in mind that we had been providing a
good to excellent service in previous quarters!
I have just received another one of these reports
for 2006/07, which shows Cambridge has moved to the upper quartile.
We had already recognised our problems in the summer of 2005, after
2 experienced Officers left us and another 2 were off long-term sick.
We had also been quick to act on our declining performance, but we
all know how long it can take to recover from a decline in benefits
performance.
In January 2006, we introduced same-day assessments
for claims that were fully complete with all necessary evidence upon
receipt. Our view here was simple. If a customer can provide all we
ask on initial request then we, in turn, will assess the claim on
the day we receive it. We also ring-fenced outstanding work, introduced
“drop-in” training sessions, were explicit about what we expected
from staff and introduced weekly 100% accuracy checks.
As part of our performance review, we had a private
consultant, Simon Bailey from ISCAS Ltd, undertake a brief review
of our Revenue and Benefit Services.
This review highlighted how highly dependant Revenue
and Benefits service is on systems when it comes to effective administration
and service delivery. The report recognised that failing IT systems,
or excellent IT systems that are poorly administered, can have a huge
impact on performance and cost of the service. Authorities that have
issues with system administration and usage will inevitably experience
problems with service delivery. The report went on to indicate that
this is not the case at Cambridge and that we use Northgate’s Revenues
and Benefits applications to their full potential.
In using Northgate’s solutions we have a system
that is both legislatively correct and functionally rich. We believe
that exploiting our core systems to their full potential benefits
both customer and staff.
Our use of Northgate was key to our success in
pulling back our dip in performance and we continue to receive new
software with enthusiasm and ensure all staff are on board with changes.
Alison Cole
Cambridge City Council
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