‘Health check’ for key council system

Darlington Borough Council has used NEC Revenues & Benefits for 20 years. Helping its 50 users to manage their caseload is the council’s revenues and benefits operations team, including System Administrator Andrew Cairns. He explains why Darlington wanted an expert review of this key system:

“We’ve been using NEC Revenues and Benefits very effectively for a long time. But after a period of staff turnover and non-stop legislative change, we felt the time was right to reassess ways of working so we could maximise efficiency. So we asked one of NEC’s consultants to help.”

Our three-day Revenues & Benefits Evaluation Service sees experienced consultants talk to system administrators, users and heads of service to confirm good practice and identify areas for improvement.

Through a series of meetings and remote checks, we review databases, system parameters, cybersecurity, licenses and working practices. Our final report then sets out the options for improvement and automation and the likely return on investment for each action. We completed this process for Darlington in October 2023.

Immediate improvements

Working closely with Andrew’s team and speaking with colleagues in revenues and benefits, we reviewed end-to-end processes and identified a series of improvements, some of which were implemented straight away.

For example, we showed how the team could automatically create a claim or change in circumstances when they received a Universal Credit file from the DWP. We also identified a quick change to system parameters that would enable the automation of key debt recovery processes.

These changes alone removed significant amounts of manual processing, giving the council more time to focus on its customers. The report also outlines longer-term improvements that could be delivered when the time is right.

Andrew explains the benefits:

“NEC spoke to people at all levels and really got into the detail. The report was incredibly helpful too. It suggested workable improvements and also highlighted where we already followed best practice, which gave the team a real boost.”

Available in all areas

For Darlington, we completed a review of both revenues and benefits functions, but our evaluation service is also available for single functions or even just a particular aspect, such as debt recovery automation.