Shared service given the thumbs
up
Scrutiny Councillors from across South
Worcestershire have given the Revenues and Benefits Shared Service
a clean bill of health, but recommend that future joint
arrangements should be planned in more detail and that a head of
service should be appointed early on.
The shared service was launched in 2007 to
provide a revenues and benefits service for Malvern Hills,
Worcester City and Wychavon District Councils. Councillors from
each authority came together last autumn to investigate how the
service has performed since the merger with a scrutiny report
considered at Wychavon’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee last night
(9 February).
Key findings:
- The financial savings set out in the business case have been
met – saving £1.22m in direct costs across the 3 authorities;
- The model is fit for purpose – the service initially reduced
the turn round times for housing and council tax benefit claims,
but performance suffered when the number of claims increased by
over 90% between March 2008 and March 2009.
- For future proposals the head of a new service should be
appointed as early as possible so they can focus on shaping the
service.
- Some people felt that communication about the new service
especially the problems it faced during the peak in workload could
have been better. The report recommends that for future projects
regular updates are key to manage service expectations.
- Arrangements for dealing with customer queries, via the Hub
service, had been put under considerable strain when the volume of
work increased.
Wychavon’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee
heard that some of the lessons learned are already being put into
practice as proposals are developed for enhanced two-tier working
across Worcestershire. Councillors thanked the team for producing a
“detailed, frank and honest report” and emphasised their support
for the lessons learned being applied to future joint working
initiatives.
The Scrutiny Team was chaired by Councillor
Rob Adams from Wychavon and other Members were Councillors Geoff
Williams (Worcester City) and Councillor Paul Cumming (Malvern
Hills). A copy of the report is available by clicking
here.
