The task of merging four district councils and one county council into a single unitary authority against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic could be described as a perfect storm. Particularly when one of the key steps in the journey was to consolidate revenues and benefits which were handled by teams spread across the county, each using different systems.

The project presented its fair share of cultural and technological challenges, but the consolidation proved to be a remarkable success. It has not only led to positive change for Buckinghamshire’s people, communities and businesses, it released savings of around £725,000.

Preparing for change

The journey began in April 2020 when the new Buckinghamshire Council was formed from the four district councils of Aylesbury Vale, Chiltern, South Bucks and Wycombe along with the former Buckinghamshire County Council.

Clive Jones, head of revenues and benefits for Buckinghamshire Council explains. “Although the legacy districts were close neighbours, each one came with its distinct culture and ways of working.

“For a start, each district had its own revenues and benefits team with staff who had worked together for years in a tight-knit family atmosphere. Moving to a large authority would be a big change for them.”

To add to the complexity, the teams were using systems from three separate software suppliers.

“The process of entering a council tax reduction claim in one district was totally different from the next as the systems were all configured in different ways,” explains Clive. “We needed the technology to help us consolidate our processes.”

Bringing people together

People are absolutely fundamental to the success of an organisation and Clive recognised the value of harnessing the cooperative spirit which already existed among the separate teams.

“The twice-weekly leadership team meetings we introduced were an effective way of creating a positive forum for everyone to get used to working together. These team-building meetings took on an even greater importance when Covid restrictions moved everyone into remote working.”

With such a major consolidation Clive made sure all the stakeholders, including customer services staff, the cash receipting department and the ICT team were fully on board right from the start.

“One of my abiding memories of the time was the huge Teams call we held with 112 people attending where we set out our vision for the project.”

Simplifying our processes

The priority was to agree new revenues and benefits policies for the new authority, as Clive describes. “With 235,000 households in the Bucks council area, a lot of people rely on us. So we worked together to formulate a common council tax reduction policy and an agreed process for receiving housing benefit claims.

“While it might sound ambitious, it actually made perfect sense for us to review our customer website at the same time as the revenues and benefits consolidation.

“This enabled our residents to access more services online through a new self-service portal, making it easier for them to make claims and pay bills.

Implementing the technology

Moving from separate legacy systems to a new solution without impacting on the quality of customer service was no mean feat, as Clive describes.

“To allow for a full programme of testing and staff training, we decided to split the project into two phases. Each phase involved converting, migrating and merging the existing revenues and benefits data and documents into the new NEC cloud-based system.

“Merging multiple systems from three different IT providers into one single NEC solution was an extremely complex implementation, but at every stage of the project the team from NEC ensured our business requirements were translated into technological solutions.”

Positive change

Merging all the different sets of systems, processes and ways of working was challenging but ultimately incredibly successful. The facts and figures speak for themselves.

Buckinghamshire Council is 1.6% ahead of target for the collection of business rates, and achieved the target of 98.2% in council tax collections.

“Bearing in mind 1% of our council tax revenue amounts to £4.5 million, that’s a significant achievement at a time of high inflation and living costs, explains Clive.”

The council is on track to deliver £725,000 in savings through a combination of efficiency gains, rationalised software licensing and reduced printing costs. Increased automation means experienced staff now have more time to work on complex, face-to-face cases.

The result is a better service for Buckinghamshire, as Clive agrees. “It’s been rewarding to see how much our online transaction rates have risen, and to know that our customers are accessing the services they need more quickly and easily.”