A metropolitan council benefits service

Project

A metropolitan council benefits service

Background

Over one third of all households (around 75,000) in this metropolitan council receive Housing and Council Tax Benefit, representing over £230m Annual Expenditure. Service delivery was poor, application processing took on average four months. There was a high volume of paperwork, backlogs, repeat contacts and customer complaints were normal day-to-day activities. Customers had little or no confidence in the service.

Brief

Improve services to the customers through investment in technology. Drive sustainable change in a managed way to help in alleviating poverty within this metropolitan council and create a prosperous city.

Results

Complete service transformation. An easy statement to make but a hard one to achieve. LDL turned around the performance of the Benefits Service and has maintained, year on year, a top quality service which is reflected by our 4 star “Excellent” rating from BFI for the last three years.

The service has gone through a major transformation programme that has seen investment in new technology, re-engineered processes, training and improved customer access.

Other key results:

  • Top performing quartile in the country for claim process and fraud. 
  • Our award winning new claims team processes new claims in 20 days or less, on average.
  • Over 2,000 customers benefit from our '10 day promise' every month.
  • Consistently provides a highly customer-focused service through a dedicated contact centre and One Stop Shop network.
  • Provides a fully integrated benefits service for customers helping ensure that they receive all of their entitlements.

A number of our recent achievements have been recognised by the following bodies: IRRV – Excellence in Customer Service 2005. BCS Award for use of Document Management and Service Transformation 2006.

 

Testimonial

'LDL has transformed the council’s low performing benefits function into one that places the customer at the heart of the service, has consistently achieved upper quartile performance for the last three years and in terms of the national Benefits Customer Satisfaction conducted in 2006/7 out performed all similarly sized local authorities.'

Brian Borthwick, Revenues and Benefits Client Officer, Liverpool City Council