Over the next two years Newcastle City Council need to make savings of £40 million. This is on top of the £305 million the council has had to save since 2010. This has seen huge cost pressures, including a reduction in its housing benefit admin grant and its council tax reduction grant of about 30% in total. It was crucial that the local authority found savings from wherever possible, in order to keep its services running.
In 2019, following the reduction in housing benefit caseloads due to Universal Credit and an 80% reduction in customers coming into council offices, the local authority closed its face-to-face housing benefit service and its phone lines for housing benefit landlords and business rates customers.
None of the above would have been possible without the ability to bring these services online, using a citizen engagement platform to support the new operating model. To create this new operating model, Newcastle City Council needed a reliable solution to efficiently interact with customers online.
None of the above would have been possible without the ability to bring these services online, using a digital experience platform to support the new operating model. To create this new operating model, Newcastle City Council needed a reliable solution to efficiently interact with customers online.
Mobile access through this solution was also important as the local authority had conducted research that indicated it was the primary choice for users of council services.
As a result, Newcastle City Council began its journey with IEG4, a provider of digital tools to local government, in summer 2020, with the implementation of its Customer Portal.
The Customer Portal allows customers to log on and view their council tax account online, their housing benefit status, the status of their business rates application, and much more.
The implementation took place over two months towards the end of summer, and it was done entirely remotely due to the ongoing pandemic. This meant that although the staff did not have a single day in the office, the local authority still managed to fully implement and go live with the platform with IEG4’s support.
Andrew Culpin, Service Improvement Lead, “We were really impressed with the implementation process as we didn’t require too much resource from our IT department because the solution was extremely low code and it was pretty much developed by IEG4 and implemented in majority by our systems team within revenues and benefits. This meant we had greater control over our team in terms of getting it live.
“We were keen not to lose any customer engagement by closing our face-to-face offering and we know that the Customer Portal is key to our digital acceleration and transformation. Due to Covid-19, most of our front-facing services have closed, but I think this should give other local authorities an opportunity to consider whether they even need to re-open them. There’s an expectation from our customers now that they can access services through online tools.”
The system went live fully to customers in October 2020, with a targeted exercise asking a number of customers who had previously engaged with online services if they wanted to sign-up. Since then, the Council has seen >14,000 online account sign-ups, with no promotion at all.
The focus for Newcastle City Council was on improving the user experience, and with the Customer Portal, relevant services and support available are displayed to customers right at the top of the page, making it clearer and delivering a greater user experience. This provides an easier way for customers to self-serve and avoids the need for them to call, or visit the council directly.
An essential feature has also been the FAQs section, which the local authority has full autonomy over. It’s editable and personalised and allows the Council to prioritise questions it knows that its customers will be asking. So, for example, in April it will address questions that customers tend to ask with their start of year bills.
The Portal can be accessed by customers 24/7 and Newcastle City Council noticed that customers registering for the service out of hours were more than half of the total, further evidencing to its team that this is how customers prefer to interact with its services, rather than phoning or visiting during work hours.
Culpin added: “As a low code platform, it is easy for us to make adjustments to the Customer Portal homepage itself and we don’t need to contact IEG4 every time we need something changed. This time saving has had a huge impact on how we operate.
There is also a focus on usability and on mobile-first with the platform, which was a critical requirement for us when we first set out to engage with a supplier.”
The new platform has supported Newcastle City Council with its cost reduction by supporting its digital transformation and new operating model right through to cutting out the need for postage and printing, replacing them with accessible forms online.
The ability for the platform to integrate with Newcastle’s back-office also reduces the need for processing. The less processing, the more its officers are able to spend time looking at more complex cases, talking directly to customers, and recovering debts where needed.
Rob DeFelice, Business Development Director at IEG4 says, “At IEG4 we do tricky, meaning we take all the hard work out of implementing our tools, freeing up time for councils and creating efficiencies that support their business goals. It’s been great to see Newcastle City Council gain such strong uptake of the platform so quickly. It shows that this was the right solution for them, and that the Council is aligned with its citizen’s needs.”
The Council is looking to increase its automation and there are several forms that the Customer Portal provides that lend support in this area. For example, refund forms that citizens can use to easily request refunds without speaking directly to staff provide a transactional service that would save staff time and importantly free up much-needed resources.
It is also exploring how best the local authority can take further advantage of the portal going forwards, and by securely storing and sharing information, the Council will be able to improve areas such as blue badge application.
