Client: Brent Council

The Challenge

One area identified by the Efficiency Board for improvement was council tax collection and the processing of citizen data in connection with this core activity. For Brent Council, the priority was to achieve greater efficiencies without in any way compromising the quality of service it delivered to its stakeholders.

The Solution

Capita Local Government Services was already working with Brent Council, having been appointed in 2003 to provide Revenues and IT support for council tax and business rates. As a result, the Capita team was already familiar with working practices within Brent Council, as well as being fully aligned with the Council’s need to achieve cost savings without compromising service levels. With this in mind, in February 2007 the Revenues & Services team asked Capita Local Government Services to assist it with this particular assignment.

The Benefits

Brent Council’s Revenues team realised all the anticipated benefits from the offshoring project led by Capita Local Government Services. The project stimulated the efficiency and agility of council tax-linked processing, cutting costs and freeing up resources to focus on other more complex areas of recovery. This has contributed to an improvement in overall collections, as well as enhancing customer service provision.

At the same time, this initiative – by freeing up internal resources and providing a means through which greater efficiencies can be achieved – has helped to instil a more proactive, energised and market-focused mindset within the organisation.

“We had a good relationship with Capita and they supported us very well throughout,” said Wilson. “The recovery from our implementation backlogs was less than four months. The project went very well indeed.”