Bath & North East Somerset

Bath & North East Somerset Council is a Unitary Authority which was created in 1996. Situated in the South West of England, its population of 172,000 is very diverse - the rural areas of Wansdyke providing a very different challenge to those in the City of Bath, a university city, catering for millions of tourists each year. The Council has recently received a ‘good’ rating for its Benefits Service from its CPA Assessment and an encouraging BFI report, following a full inspection.

In January 2001, the Council merged the Revenues and Benefits services, and over the next five years implemented a back office/front office split; a leading EDRMS system; introduced home working/flexible working arrangements; and implemented a Verification Framework. For various reasons during this period, the service was unable to reduce its backlogs, despite using a variety of backlog busting solutions from remote processing companies. In 2006, the service managed to secure additional funding to take on new trainees and decided to undertake a re-launch. Recognising the trainees would take time to become really effective, it was decided to try a different approach to remote processing, so the Council contacted RB Solutions.

According to Head of Service Ian Savigar: “The quality of the resources provided by RB Solutions contributed significantly towards the success of our re-launch project.”

In January 2006, a team of five processors from RB solutions spent a week on site, getting to know the staff and ways of working. Ian Savigar said, “I was impressed with the quality of the RB Solutions staff. They quickly came to terms with the way we work and actually helped some of our staff to use the system more effectively. By spending time with the staff in Bath they built up a relationship.”

In February 2006, the Council began the re-launch exercise and set a number of challenges. The first was to clear all live documents by 15 March 2006. At the time there were some 6000 items of work outstanding, yet with the hard work of the staff and the support received from RB solutions, the number of outstanding live documents was reduced to zero.

During this period, the service was also subject to a full BFI Inspection which looked at data from 2005 and found a number of problems which were mainly due to the backlog at the time. There were considerable problems with delays in appeals and backdates and once again the Council received excellent support from RB solutions to help address this issue. This meant that the service was able to maintain its improved performance, whilst at the same time reducing the backlog. Once again, Ian Savigar was impressed. He said: “RB solutions have been very flexible and supportive of our needs and have helped us through a really difficult period by providing support in a number of areas such as Council tax and Debt recovery processing, as well as HB/CTB processing. In addition, they have provided assistance with appeals and backdates.”

RB Solutions is a unique company that offers Business Improvement Solutions to the Revenues and Benefits environment. These proven solutions and based on the concept of providing flexible and quality driven services in a cost effective manner. The key services offered are: -

• Remote Benefits Processing
• Business Process Re-Engineering
• Change Management
• Project Management
• Implementation and Consultancy
• Procedural Manual Production
• Training

By utilising proven processes and procedures and with our focus on providing a high quality service, RB Solutions is able to assist Authorities in meeting their performance targets and maintaining improved levels of customer service.

For further information please call us on 0161 3317400 or email us at sales@rbsolutions.uk.com