Boston Borough Council

Boston Borough Council is a local government district in Lincolnshire serving a community of over 58,000. In 2004/05 the Council’s average time to calculate a new benefit claim had risen to 57 days. Although the Council demonstrated significant improvements in reducing this figure, by early 2007 a backlog of over 1200 pieces of post were accumulated and staff morale was at rock bottom. Additional onsite support from Capita has now cleared the outstanding claims and the Council proudly went into year-end without a backlog. The Council’s average time to calculate a new benefit claim now stands at an impressive 30 days.

Boston Borough Council had been successfully using Capita’s Academy Benefits system since February 2004 and had used onsite support from Capita during the initial go live period. Following a long period of staff resource issues, by early 2007 the Council had accumulated a backlog of around 1200 pieces of post – mostly benefit claims and ‘change in circumstance’ requests. Due to a restructure within the Council, the backlog needed clearing urgently so the management team needed to respond quickly, within very tight deadlines.

The Council was making significant structural changes and introducing many new processes. Going into year-end with a backlog would have caused considerable problems and had an adverse effect on its future performance figures. Not only did the Council need assistance with clearing the increasing backlog, it needed the issue addressing quickly leaving no time to introduce and train any new staff members.

“We needed to get up to date with our backlog of claims to enable us to do an accurate year-end and start the new financial year on an even keel. The overwhelming backlog was also having a negative effect on staff morale,” explained Cherilyn Black, Revenues and Benefits Manager at Boston Borough Council. “We needed additional resource who were familiar with the software and who knew the processes involved. They needed to fit in well with our existing team and ‘hit the ground running’,” explained Cherilyn.

Cherilyn contacted Capita to explain the situation and see if they could assist and how quickly they could react. A site visit from a Capita Consultant was arranged to determine the Council’s exact requirements and within days Capita had provided two skilled staff members. “The speed at which Capita reacted to our needs was very good. We managed to get the project up and running very quickly,” said Cherilyn.

Capita’s flexible solution provides onsite or offsite additional support for local authorities – tailored to the authority’s requirements. Boston Borough Council didn’t have a DIP (document imaging) system so the opportunity to take the work offsite was not applicable within the tight timescales.

The two additional staff members spent eight weeks at the Council and cleared the backlog of claims and continued to offer support to enable the Council to deliver all the necessary year-end reporting. Other benefits have been realised too.

“We have noticed a higher level of motivation within the team since the backlog has been cleared and our citizens also saw the benefit through our speedier claims process,” explained Cherilyn.

Things are looking brighter for the future too. Along with other major changes the Council has recently introduced, including increased capacity within the team, average processing times for new claims and ‘change in circumstances’ have been reduced by a remarkable 50%. In 2006/07 the average processing time for a new claim had reached 60 days and it’s now down to 30 days. Processing a ‘change in circumstances’ request has reduced from 16 days to just eight days.

Capita Local Government Services specialises in providing support, advice and resources to local authorities in the areas of council tax and national non-domestic rates (NNDR) administration and collection, benefits administration, contact centre services and financial services. We process over 250,000 claims per annum and our experience ensures that we tailor our process to each council’s needs - providing both onsite support to council staff, offsite processing of claims and customer contact centre support.

• Assessment of housing and council tax benefit claims (onsite and offsite)
• Customer services for over 200,000 personal callers and around 1.6 million telephone enquiries per annum
• Paying out over £660 million in housing benefits and council tax benefits
• Assessment of free school meals, clothing grants and student grants
• Community outreach and fraud visits
• Specialist fraud and overpayment recovery teams
• Centralised systems, training and policy support
• Completion of subsidy returns, DWP statistical returns and CPA self-assessments