LDL Annual Review.pdf

7/27/2019 LDL Annual Review.pdf

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Foreword

As a partnership we have always strived to meet the increasing expectations of our

customers. In the face of the current economic climate and increasing demands we have

continued to deliver performance excellence, innovate, invest and challenge the veryprocesses and procedures we operate by. All to maximise the benefit to our; staff,

services and customers. The partnership is grounded in placing the customer at the

heart of everything we do. The delivery of this key strategic objective is dependent on

the full commitment of all staff at Liverpool Direct Limited. Once again they have risen

to the challenge and excelled.

The Partnership Framework, introduced in 2011, has helped to further capitalise on

the success of these strong relationships. A relationship where each partner trusts theother to support and develop the business. A relationship founded on its workforce and

on the trust built up over the lifetime of the contract. The partners of Liverpool Direct

Limited (both BT and Liverpool City Council) have worked tirelessly to deliver on its

priorities for the benefit of all its stakeholders.

This Annual Review looks back at the successes of 2012/2013 and the continual

improvements being made in each of the service areas supported by strong investment

and the development and commitment of our most valuable asset, our people.

Joe Anderson

Mayor of Liverpool.

Director of

Liverpool Direct

Limited.

Neil Rogers

President, Global

Government, BT.

Chairman of

Liverpool Direct

Limited.

Welcome to the Liverpool Direct Limited 2012/2013 Annual Review. This

Review is a public demonstration of the commitment from Liverpool City

Council, BT and Liverpool Direct Limited to the future success and continued

collaboration which has been the essence of this longstanding partnership.


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The Benefits Service delivers over1,200extra school meals entitlements.

1. Review of 2012/2013

Welcome to the 2012/2013 Annual Review of the work carried out by Liverpool Direct

Limited on behalf of its customers. Whilst Liverpool City Council remains our major

customer (and key strategic partner)

our customer base is wide ranging and

includes; Home Office (SIA),

Northumbria Police, Building Schools

for the Future, London and Quadrant

Housing Association, many hundreds of

schools and Liverpool Mutual Homes

(RSL).

2012/2013 has been a challenging year

in many respects. Our customers are

continuing to face severe budget

constraints. At the same time customer expectations are increasing. Technology

developments continue at a rapid pace, the market is more competitive and service

demands are growing. Yet staff have once again excelled in striving to deliver first class

services under what are difficult trading conditions.

Company Finance Review

Liverpool Direct Limited has had a solid financial year. Revenue grew from 82.4million

in 2011/2012 to 86.1 million in 2012/2013. This represents a year on year growth of

4.5%. The key drivers being; additional

SIA works, investment in ICT and

additional spend in the area of Benefits

and Welfare Reform.

The Total Sales Order Value is the

future life blood of the Company. This is

future guaranteed work (2012-2017). It

helps to protect jobs and drive new employment. In 2012/2013 this Order Book Value

grew by over 36 million. This position has been helped substantially by; securing two

contract extensions for the Security Industry Authority work and the delivery of several


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significant projects (eg. Desktop Refresh, Equal Pay and Job Evaluation Projects). The

latter projects also impacted on the in year revenue performance.

Value for Money

The services delivered to Liverpool City Council (and other customers) are based upon

an affordability model. This gives guaranteed up front savings with no reduction in

services and an increase in service performance.

Direct savings delivered to our customers now run to many tens of millions of pounds.

In addition to these guaranteed savings Liverpool Direct Limited has twice reduced its

contract price to Liverpool City

Council. In 2007 by nearly 2 millionper year and by a further 4.5 million

per year in 2012.

The 2012 price reduction to Liverpool

City Council was funded through

significant cuts in the costs of; ICT

Services, Contact Centre, Human

Resource and Payroll Service and OneStop Shops. There has been no

reduction in either services or performance levels. Indeed they have again improved.

Staff have excelled in delivering higher performance levels with significantly reduced

resources.

Direct savings delivered to Liverpool City Council since 2001 include:

Direct Savings 2001-2013Savings (million)

Cashable savings 168.7

Investment and avoidable costs 90.0

Total 258.7

Table 1.1: Direct Savings since 2001-2013.


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Other customers have also benefited from reduced costs. In 2010, Liverpool Direct

Limited reduced its Contract price to the SIA by a significant 20% per year reduction.

Again with enhanced performance levels.

Investment into Infrastructure

Liverpool City Council has benefited financially by its close working relationship with BT

and Liverpool Direct Limited through its direct investments. Investments initiated in

2012/2013 totalled over 8.5 million. The focus of this investment has been on building

capacity and strengthening the infrastructure of the business in all areas to enable us to

provide service excellence, exhibit industry best practice and exceed customer

expectations. Examples include:

Investments ActivityTotal Cost

(million)

Desktop refresh 2.2

Other ICT Infrastructure 1.9

Storage Network Upgrade 1.7

Next Generation Data Centre 1.5

IVR / Automation Self Service 0.5

Adults Social Care System Replacement 0.5

Internet Upgrade 0.2

E-recruitment System 0.2

Total 8.2

Table 1.2: Core Investments 2012/2013.

Since 2001 investments have now totalled over 90 million. These are avoidable costs

to Liverpool City Council. They help to enhance the level of service quality and invest in

the future of services.


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Further investments are planned in all areas of the business during 2013/2014. These

planned investments include:

Potential Investments (million)

Completion of Desktop Rollout 2.7

ICT Applications Systems:

Adults Care System Childrens Care System Leisure Services System

2.0

ICT Back Office Systems (Storage, Servers etc) 2.0

ICT Network 1.0

Voice Services Upgrade 0.4

Notre Dame School ICT 0.2

Cash Kiosks 0.2

Password Refresh 0.2

Total 8.7

Table 1.3: Potential Investments 2013/2014.

These investments will help to support Liverpool City Council and protect future

performance. They help to deliver immediate (and in year) savings for Liverpool City

Council in many forms (eg. energy costs, avoidable costs) whilst reducing risk.

Investment into Liverpool

Investments can take many forms and include; new ICT infrastructure, systems,

enhanced service levels, additional resources, price reductions and other forms of

added value. The business has invested in the infrastructure and services of Liverpool

City Council every year since the company was established in 2001. 2012/2013 was no

different. Other forms of investments in 2012/2013 included:

A commitment to support three school rebuilding programme through thedeployment of ICT to the value of1 million (2013-2020).


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Continued support for the personal development of young people within the

community through the partnership with the Duke of Edinburghs (DofE) Award

with 25,000 pa invested to the scheme.

Over 50 young people and unemployed have been recruited through an

Apprenticeship and Traineeship Programme launched by Liverpool Direct Limited in

partnership with Liverpool City

Council. The programme has been

hugely successful in enabling

apprentices and trainees to

develop new skills, enhance their

knowledge and gain valuable real

work experience to prepare them

for the ever changing employment

market. Apprentices and trainees

engaged in the programme complete an appropriate work based qualification based

on their specific skills and role. Opportunities are based across both Liverpool Direct

Limited and Liverpool City Council in service areas ranging from; Social Services,

Legal, Policy work and Leisure, through to ICT, Benefits and Web Services.

As part of the structural and governance improvements agreed as part of the Contract

Refresh Agreement, further value to the City Council is delivered through a guaranteed

share of all third party work secured based on 1.25% of turnover generated by such

third party business. This transfers no commercial risk to the City Council.

Delivering Added Value

Added Value is the process of generating additional benefits to the City Council and its

customers and stakeholders. This added value can take many forms and includes;financial, reduced associated costs, higher performance, reputation, customer

satisfaction, reduced waste, contribution to corporate and social objectives etc. It can

also be about adding value to a product or service as a result of a particular process.

Table (1.4) provides a summary of Added Value delivered by Liverpool Direct Limited to

the City Council for 2012/2013:

Human Resource and Payroll Service

launched a new e-recruitment portal.

Over4,000 a year of printing andphotocopying costs has been saved.


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Service AreaYear to Date

(K)

ICT Service 3.5

Benefit Service 1.0

One Stop Shop Service 0.8

Revenue Service 0.6

Careline Service 0.2

Contact Centre Service 0.2

Human Resource and Payroll 0.1

Total 6.4

Table 1.4: Summary of Added Value to Date 2012/2013.

Consequential Savings

The Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit subsidy grant claim is critical to the Serviceand the Councils finances. Each year the grant

claim is audited for the previous year by the Audit

Commission (now via Grant Thornton). The

objective of this key Audit is to provide assurance

to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

on the accuracy of all benefit payments. The total

value of the grant claim for 2011/2012 was over

335 million.Over the last six years the Benefits Service has

been successful in improving the accuracy of the

claim and reducing the amount that is clawed

back by the DWP. The level of clawback reduced

from approximately 5 million (2004/2005) to

56.8K in respect of the 2009/2010 claim. There was no clawback from the DWP for the

2010/2011 claim. The 2011/2012 figure is not yet known. It is expected to be nil.


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One element of the grant claim audit is to analyse the accuracy of overpayments and

specifically the cause and classification of overpayments. Historically any 'Local

Authority Error' would result in no subsidy being claimed and the Local Authority having

to absorb the cost. 'Local Authority Error' is defined as payments made as a result of a

mistake by the Local Authority whether the result of error or omission. This means that

any overpayment that accrues as a result of delay in acting upon information counts as

Local Authority Error. Changes in 2004 involved the introduction of an upper threshold

and a lower threshold. Both thresholds are set by the DWP on an annual basis. The

upper threshold represents 0.54% of the total amount of benefit paid annually. The

lower threshold represents 0.48% of the total amount of benefit paid annually. On an

annual basis a Local Authority can claim: 100% subsidy if the total amount of Local

Authority error is below the lower threshold or 40% subsidy if the total amount of Local

Authority error falls between the lower

and higher threshold. Nil subsidy

applies if the total amount of Local

Authority error exceeds the upper

threshold.

In 2005 Liverpool City Council was not

able to achieve these targets and

realise this additional subsidy. To help address this issue the Service produced a strategy

for containing and reducing the level of Local Authority Error. For the 2008/2009 claim

the higher threshold was achieved meaning that 40% subsidy for Local Authority Error

was payable; this represented 505,000 in additional subsidy. The grant claim audit for

2009/2010 confirmed that for the first time the Service achieved additional subsidy at

the 100% rate enabling the Council to receive 1.21 million in extra subsidy. 100%

subsidy was again achieved in respect of the 2010/2011 claim resulting in an additional

1.24 million in subsidy.

Value of BT Relationship

The value of the Partnership extends beyond the Services of Liverpool Direct Limited. BT

is committed to playing a full role in the relationship. BT now employs over 1,590 staff

in Merseyside and spends around 75 million pa with suppliers (in Merseyside). BT has

Liverpool operational centres at:

Lancaster House.

Wood Street.

In 2012/2013 Liverpool Direct

Limited successfully retained the

Gold Investors in People Standard

across all service areas.


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BT is sponsoring the planning event for

the International Festival of Business

2014 which will encourage more

businesses to grow, to export, to

innovate, to be more ambitious. The

Festival will run throughout June and

July 2014 with an anticipated audience

of 250,000 business professionals with

the objective to double UK exports by

2020. BT will be providing ongoing

support to the Festival.

Over the course of the past year Liverpool Direct Limited has worked closely with the

three Liverpool Headteacher Associations and the Childrens and Young Peoples Service

to develop an ICT Forum that scrutinises and develops operational services and the

schools Technology Roadmap for the future. The Roadmap has been focussing upon

new and more cost effective broadband solutions, content filtering services to

safeguard pupils online and planning pilots of cloud-based services such as Office 365.

A significant investment in the Mayors new school building programme has seen a BT

commitment of 1 million towards ICT solutions for the first three schools. This

investment has been supplemented by additional funding from Liverpool Direct Limited

and the City Council. The first of the new schools, Notre Dame Catholic College, will

benefit from considerable investment and has undertaken a five year support service

with Liverpool Direct Limited. The investment has included:

High Bandwidth Broadband circuit.

Complete Network infrastructure.

Full WiFi network across the new building.

Student devices for use in the classroom / home.

Teacher devices to enhance lesson delivery.

Interactive LCD screens in learning spaces.

Implementation of these services by our technical and project management

specialists.


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Delivering new schools is a priority for the Mayor of Liverpool and alongside new

housing, development and employment and skills, it is considered an important factor in

the economic regeneration strategy for the City.

In 2008 BT sponsored the Capital of Culture Year with a cash donation of500,000.

BT has committed to a further five year sponsorship of the BT Convention Centre at the

Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre. A total financial commitment of 2 million

since 2008.Governance

The governance of the contract is overseen by the Board of Liverpool Direct Limited.

This has representation from; Liverpool City Council and BT. The Board is responsiblefor; the financial health of the business, review of the implementation and delivery of

services, monitoring service delivery and performance, discussing future opportunities,

working together and building positive long term relationships.

Joint Venture and Shareholders Agreement

This agreement is between the City Council and BT to ensure that the shareholders co-

operate with each other in the running and operation of the Company to provideServices in accordance with the terms of the Service Provision Agreement.

Relationship and Partnership Framework

This is a set of fundamental principles agreed by all the parties which are viewed as key

to the creation of a successful and long term relationship. This non-contractual

document sets out the high level behaviours for a successful relationship between

Liverpool City Council, BT and Liverpool Direct

Limited. It helps to set the scene for how the

parties will work together and how they will

behave within this relationship.

The Framework is both an innovative and bold

step in the evolution of Liverpool Direct

Limited. For the first time within a joint venture partnership it set out the standards

expected of its shareholders and key stakeholders. Also the expected standards within

its relationships with; staff, customers, suppliers and end users.

Benefits Service administered

over328 million in Benefits to

Liverpool residents.


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Service Provision Agreement

This is the agreement between BT and Liverpool City Council for the provision of

services. This is the document from which all the Service Schedules and Service

Improvement Plans arise. We regularly review our progress against these contractual

obligations and commitments arising from the Service Provision Agreement.

As part of our reporting requirements, a monthly Quality of Service Report for each

Service is produced which includes the following information in respect of the services

provided:

A synopsis of the services delivered

(executive summary).

Performance against any target

Service Levels.

Added value delivered in the

month.

Any service performance issues, if

appropriate and any proposed

corrective actions.

We communicate externally with a range of stakeholders including, Board members, the

City Council, staff, suppliers and the community we operate within. Examples include; a

staff or Company business plan (which is shared with staff and published on the

company website) and Stakeholder briefings which are composed and published each

quarter summarising key developments and a detailed performance summary. These

are shared with staff and the public through the intranet and website. In addition this

Annual Review is prepared and published.

The performance of Liverpool Direct Limited in its first ten years of operation has met or

exceeded its commitments. However the Partnership is not just about finance it is also

about; performance, growing the business, protecting jobs, innovation, quality and

developing a truly world class workforce.


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2. 2012/2013 Review of PerformancePerformance is of fundamental

importance to all areas of the business.

It remains a constant priority particularly

as challenges arise and as the

organisation strives to deliver higher

levels of performance and yet high

impact savings to Liverpool City Council

and its other customers. However our

commitment to performance excellence

remains undiminished. This has been along term commitment. It is about delivering and then exceeding on all agreed targets

and objectives. Performance is not just about individual service targets it is also about

the goal of service excellence reinforced with a structured approach to continuous

improvement.

A refreshed Performance and Development Review was introduced. This forms an

integral part for how we are working to invest in and develop people. It provides a

mechanism, and a structured process, to support both managers and staff in explainingindividual roles in the organisation and how individuals contribute to a successful

business. Performance excellence is a key competitive advantage of the business in a

challenging market space. Each service area has contributed significantly to achieving its

performance goals during 2012/2013. A review of individual service areas

demonstrates the progress made and

highlights strong areas of performance.

As Liverpool Direct Limited strives toexceed expectations it continues to

focus on performance, and to use this

intelligence to continually reshape

services, processes and procedures to

drive up performance whilst delivering

savings. It is about putting the customer at the heart of the organisation and getting

better in every possible way.

In the last 12 months,over2,000employees completed a

development programme with

Learning and Development.


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Benefit Service

The Benefit Service is responsible for administering a wide range of benefits on behalf of

Liverpool City Council for some of the most vulnerable members of the community of

Liverpool including individuals with a disability and households with a low income. It

handles a benefit caseload of around

82,000 and around 350 million of

benefits in all forms. The Service

handles many forms of benefit and

delivers related services (eg. housing

benefit, Council Tax benefit, fairer

charging and benefit maximisation).

2012/2013 represented an exceptionally

challenging year for the Benefits Service

due to the many national and local

welfare reform changes. These were planned for and implemented on time. These

challenges included:

The localisation of Council Tax Support following the abolition of Council Tax Benefit

from 2013/2014. Authorities were required to develop and implement their new

schemes whilst at the same time dealing with a 10% funding cut compared to

current spend. This represents a 6.2 million cut for Liverpool. However the Council

took advantage of transitional funding thereby ensuring that reductions in rebate

were set at 8.5%. This required approximately 3.2 million in expenditure on

Council Tax Support. 1.5 million of the additional expenditure funded by

Government from the 100 million grant, therefore the Council (and its precepting

bodies) has to find around 1.7 million.

The abolition of the Crisis Loans and Community Care Grants by the DWP and their

replacement with local provision from April 2013 (Social Fund or Liverpool Citizens

Support Scheme).

The implementation of restrictions on Housing Benefit for social sector tenants

around numbers of bedrooms. The reductions in benefits are 14% of benefit for one

excess bedroom, or 25% for two or more. Around 11,000 Liverpool tenants are

affected by these changes.


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The Benefit Cap is effective in Liverpool from August 2013. The Department for

Work and Pensions postponed the implementation date from April 2013 pending

the outcomes of pilots. Some 305 families in Liverpool are affected by these

changes.

In spite of these challenges and increasing workloads, the Benefits Service maintained

service excellence and top quality performance in 2012/2013.

Over the past four years, the Service has come under increased pressure due to the

effects of the economic recession. This has seen a major increase in the caseload from

approximately 72,000 live claims in 2008 to over 82,000 currently. Further increases in

workload have resulted from the implementation of the DWPs automated transfer to

local authority systems (ATLAS) and uncertainty over forthcoming welfare reform

changes. This additional work has been handled at no additional cost to the City Council.

The Service Levels for the Benefits Service in 2012/2013 included:

Definition of SLA2012/2013

Target

2012/2013

Performance

Process new Council Tax Benefits Claims (days) 28 days 25.50 days

Process new Local Authority Rent Rebate claims 28 days 22.27 days

Process new private tenant claims 28 days 23.75 days

Average for processing all new claims on time in

accordance with BVPI 78a28 days 24.58 days

Accuracy of Determination based on a monthly

accuracy check of random 10%

>90% 91%

Percentage of all rent allowance claims paid within 7

days of decision>90% 93.37%

Percentage of data matches resolved within 2 months >90% 93.60%

Percentage of requests for reconsideration/revision

within 4 weeks>65% 90.63%


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Target

2012/2013

Performance

Recovery of recoverable overpayments raised in each

Financial Year in accordance with BVP79 (b)60% 61.58%

BMS Total Benefit income generated annually 4 million 8.6 million

BMS Standard BMS check within 28 days 85% 93%

Fairer Charging Complete financial assessment

within 14 days of all information being available90% 98%

Table 2.1: Benefits Service: Contractual Service Level Agreements 2012/2013.

Other achievements by the Benefit Service during 2012/2013 included:

The total volume of incoming items to the Housing and Council Tax Benefit

functions in 2012/2013 was over 450,000 items. This represented a 25% increase on

incoming items compared to the same period last year. The bulk of this increase is

attributable to the ATLAS system which imported over 90,000 items in this period.

The Service has trained up additional resources to undertake assessment work. A

major project was undertaken to streamline processes for ATLAS notifications (at no

cost to the Council). This has resulted in elements of automation in processing. This

was implemented in August 2012.

With investment in staffing, continuous improvement and additional resources,

performance remains well ahead of target. In 2012/2013 new claims were assessed

in just over 25 days (compared to the target of 28 days). Changes in circumstances

were assessed in just over 11 days. This is at the same time as many Benefit Services

nationally are reporting growing backlogs.

As at the end of 2012/2013 the Fairer Charging function had collected 3.7 million

which represents a 3% increase on 2011/2012. All targets for speed of processing are

currently being met.

The Service was ahead of target for the processing of free school meals and school

travel. Processing of free school meals has continued to be performed quickly with over

99% of applications processed within six weeks.


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The Benefit Service implemented a new software package known as Routefinder to

support travel pass administration This was to ensure the smooth administration of the

City Councils updated policy for the

assessment of home to school

transport travel passes and to support

high quality and consistent decision

making.

To support both families and

individuals the Benefit Service has

taken a number of actions including:

Provided over 11,000 customers with notification that their Housing Benefit would

be reduced from April 2013. This required installation of new software and the

gathering of data in respect of over 38,000 properties. All customers were notified

in January 2013.

Solid progress was made in the project to develop a local alternative to the

discretionary social fund (Social Fund). This has included; public consultation on

the draft policy, software procurement and implementation, testing, development

of operational procedures and staff training. Testing was completed during Quarter

Three with a go live date of April 2013. Local suppliers of quality recycled goods and

reconditioned items (ie Bulky Bobs) were engaged and arrangements set up to

provide essential household items to those who are eligible to apply to the scheme

for such items. An instant payment solution for emergency cash payments was

implemented via Pay Point. The

scheme went live successfully to

time and budget on 1 April 2013.

The project to devise and thenimplement a replacement for

Council Tax Benefit from

2013/2014 was delivered on

target including; consultation on the options for the new scheme was completed,

software was ordered and testing completed, financial modelling completed and

communication and training plans had been delivered.

Despite the extraordinary demands that the Service faced as a result of the economicrecession, and level of welfare reform, it continues to deliver.

During 2012/2013 Liverpool Direct

Limited continued to financially

support theDuke of Edinburgh

Award in schools across Liverpool.


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During 2012/2013 the Service has implemented a new casework management system

for the Benefit Maximisation Team (lizuka ICT System). The new system provides:

Integrated workflow supporting standardised high quality processes.

Enhanced management information.Integrated recording of benefit checks.

Document capture to scan in customer records.

The new system went live in October 2012 and is now providing an excellent tool for

service and performance improvements. The development was fully funded by Liverpool

Direct Limited.

In 2012 the Service implemented a new Landlord Portal for Liverpools major social

landlords through the Benefit ICT System. The Landlord Portal is a web based portal

that allows defined social landlords to view limited information on customers in receipt

of Housing Benefit. The Landlord can only view information if they are receiving

payments on behalf of the customer and can see the status of the case (eg. active,

suspended, pending, cancelled), details of the benefit, the period of the benefit and the

next payment due. The development

was fully funded by Liverpool Direct

Limited. There are strict access controls

in place and use is monitored by the

Benefits Service. This system has been

rolled out to the largest social landlords

in Liverpool representing over 35,000

customers.

The Benefit Service has brought together

the Charging Functions for residential

and non-residential care in order for these services to be integrated, consistent,

improve benefits advice to the customer and ensure effective collection of income. This

integrated approach to advice and assessment is providing a single gateway through a

fully integrated social care advice, assessment and charging service, encompassing all

customers regardless of age or whether they are on a direct payment or choose the

more traditional route to care delivery.


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Revenues Service

The Revenues Service is responsible for the collection of; Council Tax, Business Rates,

Business Improvement District Levy, Corporate Debts, Overpaid Housing Benefit,

Former Tenants Arrears and Community Charge. In 2012/2013 it collected over 340

million in revenues on behalf of Liverpool City Council.

The Service Levels for the Revenue Service 2012/2013 included:


Target

2012/2013

Performance

Net Debit Collection Rate (annual) 90% 92.82%

The annual reduction in value of Council Tax

arrears (annual)10 million 14.7 million

Correspondence is answered following receipt 90% 91.3%

Accuracy of transactions carried out (Council

Tax)96% 96.7%

Undertake visits of make electronic checks on

void properties every 26 weeks or in the case

of long term voids (ie. empty more than one

year), every 52 weeks (Council Tax)

95% 100%

Collection rate in accordance with BVPI10

(annual)93% 96.6%

The annual target reduction in NNDR arrears 1.25 million 3.6 million

Accuracy of transactions (NNDR) 96% 97.1%

Undertake visits or make electronic checks on

void properties every 26 weeks or in the case

of long term voids (ie. empty more than one

year), every 52 weeks (NNDR)

95% 100%

Table 2.2: Revenues Service: Service Level Agreements 2012/2013.


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The Revenues Service met or exceeded all its Service level targets during 2012/2013.

Other achievements of the Revenues Service included introducing a barcode solution

with Allpay, Ricoh and ICT to replace payment cards. A solution was put in place prior to

any changes to Council Tax Support which now affects 44,700 customers (from April

2013). The barcodes were thoroughly

tested and the solution for bills issued

successfully went live in December.

During January, the solution was

extended to include Reminder Notices,

Summonses and Liability Notices.

Preparing for Council Tax changes

(being introduced from April 2013) as

part of the localisation of Council Tax

Support was significant. This included

arranging with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for the electronic transfer

of data for those working age customers who will have direct deductions in respect of

their liability to pay 8.5% of the Council Tax on their property. Other actions included:

Migrating the data from the Radius Recoup application to the Legal Debt Recovery

Module on the replacement server. This application is used to collect CommunityCharge and archived Council Tax.

Implementing the National Non-Domestic Rates (NNDR) Deferral Scheme. Now over

380 ratepayers successfully deferred part of their increased rates liability as part of

this Service.

Implementing the extension to the Small Business Rates Relief scheme which

benefited over 4,200 ratepayers in the

City.

Piloting a scheme to improve collection

under attachment to earnings. In

2012/2013 this scheme identified

10.7% of cases issued resulting in over

12,000 being collected. Also

introducing a scheme for improving collection in 203 probate cases by over 9,000.

During 2012/2013,99%ofOne Stop Shop customers were

offered an appointment within

five working days.


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Issuing 5,000 high value cases for the Debt Prioritisation exercise with Experian and

implementing the bulk write off procedure in Northgate for pre 2006 cases to write

off cases with a debt value of5.459 million.

A major piece of work in 2012/2013 has been driving up the number of customers

signing up for e-billing by; identifying Liverpool City Council and Liverpool Direct Limited

staff who pay Council Tax; identifying owners of more than five properties and providing

an auto response on e-mails; setting up a message on the Revenues queue in the

Contact Centre; reviewing outgoing documents and undertaking a mail shot to direct

debit payers; promoting the benefits at every opportunity by Customer Service Advisors

in the Contact Centre and One Stop Shops. The number at the end of 2012/2013 was

over 30,500 against over 20,900 in 2011/2012.

Improving First Point of Contact Resolution (in the Contact Centre and One Stop Shops)

is critical and an ongoing process. The focus is on reducing the number of Service

Requests passed through to the Revenues Service. The introduction of eRevenues will

look to reduce the number of service requests by some 27,500 items.

ICT Service

The ICT Service is a core element of the Liverpool Direct Limited business offer. ICT is

involved in every single aspect of the Company operation. It is pleasing to report that

performance has again been excellent in 2012/2013. Its range and scope of work is

impressive. It now includes; Platform and Systems support, Desktop, Servers, Networks

and Applications. ICT provides Solution Design and Project Delivery on behalf of all its

customers.

The Service Levels targets for the ICT Service 2012/2013 included:


Target

2012/2013

Performance

Severe Business Disruption:

Business Unit (sub-unit):

Unable to operate. Service component failed or severely

impaired.

99% 100%


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Target

2012/2013

Performance

Major Business Disruption: Critical user or user

group:

Unable to operate. Business unit experiencing significant

reduction in service performance.

97% 100%

Minor Business Disruption:

Single user or user group unable to workwith no available workaround.

97% 99%

Minor Disruption: Single user or user group

experiencing problems but with ICT defined

available workaround.

97% 99%

Advice and Guidance offered to users via Service

Desk.97% 99%

Table 2.3: ICT Service: Service Level Agreements 2012/2013.

ICT Services performance was excellent. However many improvements were delivered

in 2012/2013. These improvements included:

All Council Tax and National Non Domestic rates (NNDR) Year End Rollover were

completed outside of standard working hours ensuring no disruption to the business

and its ability to collect revenue.

Over 70 servers and critical applications were migrated to the new VNX based

Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure. This has resulted in an overall

performance improvement for systems and web servers and will give file systems

dual site resilience and improved performance file access times for all customers.

A total of11 ICT Service Centre Advisors are now fully functioning from home. The

Connect2ICT Agility programme has seen a number of significant benefits for both

staff and the business including improved productivity and flexible working. During a

fire evacuation of Premier Court on 21 November 2012, Connect2ICT, the ICT Service

Centre, continued to operate and take nine calls during the evacuation period. Prior


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to this agile working, Connect2ICT would have been unavailable. The adoption of the

agile working solution has provided continued operation and enhanced business

continuity capability.

Pushing activity to first point of contact continues. Now new user requests, access to

drives, mailbox permissions and various other Active Directory administrative tasks are

delivered by the Connect2ICT Service Desk. Account operator permissions (and the

transfer of other such activities) has improved the customer experience by increasing

ICT response times and providing additional capacity to concentrate on more complex

ICT incidents.The Election Results Collation System was used

for the May 2012 Mayoral and Local Election

results verification. This enabled the results to be

displayed on a large screen as they were

announced. The system also provided the

reporting of information that Liverpool City

Council had not made available for previous

Elections.

The eRecruitment portal was launched on behalf

of Liverpool City Council. This replaced a number

of manual processes with a uniform and accurate

online solution and provides an improved

recruitment experience for hiring managers, applicants, and recruiters.

Other ICT infrastructure developments included the network load balancing devices

used to distribute traffic evenly to Web, Public Web access and corporate users were

upgraded to the latest security software version. This upgrade also provides greater

support and functionality for Exchange 2010. Other ICT Infrastructure improvementsincluded:

A greatly enhanced McAfee Security Management (anti-virus suite) platform was

implemented. This work made it possible for ICT to provide encryption services on all

laptops and desktops as a catalogue item. Using McAfee in preference to an

alternative option eliminates expense of a discrete management infrastructure and

eliminates software licence costs of circa 25 per machine per year and rationalises

support to the existing McAfee Management platform. Employing encryption onLiverpool City Council devices eliminates the risk of fines from the Office of the


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Information Commissioner should a device be lost or stolen, or should a hard drive

be inappropriately disposed of.

The Datastore 32 Document

Archiving solution was replaced and

enhanced to allow the Revenues

service to continue to recover aged

debt. This solution has now also

been used by new customers

wishing to utilise an archiving

solution.

All processes and reports were produced for the Benefits Service to ensure

successful submission of the Benefits Grant claim. This ensured that Liverpool City

Council received all subsidies due.The document upload limit within the Capita One application used by Childrens

Services was increased from four Megabytes (MB) to 32MB. This change now allows

customers to successfully upload larger documents into the application and negate

the requirement for any user to store any information to an external source. The

increase to capacity introduces a number of benefits such as greater staff efficiency

and productivity whilst ultimately reducing the risk involved in storing documents

outside of Capita One.

The Registrars Office holds approximately 16,500 registers containing an estimated 6.5

million entries of birth, marriage and

death and issues around 30,000 certificates

a year. Liverpool Direct Limited has been

working alongside the Registrars Service to

transition away from the existing,cumbersome process of certificate

production in order to deliver a solution to

digitise all registers. Instead of photocopying templates onto paper, certificates are

scanned, indexed, backed up and easily retrieved electronically. The digitisation of Birth

Certificates was completed successfully with all certificates available electronically.

The ICT Service introduced a solution which allows the Network Support team to have a

full and accurate view of the entire network database and infrastructure across the

Over50Apprenticeshave

been recruited through

Liverpool Direct Limited.


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estate. This cutting edge technology provides the support team with a whole host of

functionality including a traffic light view of the network and detailed alerts that ensures

proactive monitoring of faults.

In a major piece of infrastructure work a total of 10,567 mailboxes were successfully

migrated from Exchange 2003 to the new Exchange 2010 platform. This migration has

provided a fast, stable, reliable and secure messaging solution for all business e-mail

users. This upgrade has introduced a new and more resilient email infrastructure, which

provides greater functionality and usability. The successful implementation of Exchange

2010 has provided additional capacity to each customer by increasing the size of a

standard user mailbox from 40 Megabytes (MB) to 60 MB.

Contact Centre Service

The Liverpool Direct Contact Centre provides a first point of contact service for all City

Council calls. It remains the only local government Contact Centre to be open 24 hours,

365 days a year. The Contact Centre has evolved from a small team of staff dealing with

a few thousand calls per week to its current capacity of dealing with over 25,500 calls

per week. The service provides a comprehensive, reliable, quality service to customers,

residents, businesses and tourists. The Contact Centre continually seeks to improve and

develop to provide the highest level of service in line with industry standard best

practice and which places the customer at the heart of the Contact Centre.

The Service Levels for the Contact Centre 2012/2013 included:


Target

2012/2013

Performance

Total Calls Answered 92% 95%

% of all calls received answered by IVR 5% 10%

Table 2.4: Contact Centre: Contractual Service Level Agreements 2012/2013.

The Contact Centre exceeded all its targets during 2012/2013. Many other

improvements took place and its achievements included:

InApril 2012 the Library telephony service for; Childwall, Speke, Garston and Walton

Libraries transferred into the Contact Centre as part of the phased service take onfor all Library calls. This continued throughout 2012/2013 with the Contact Centre


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answering all Libraries telephony. A new line was created for this service (0151 233

3069) which includes; Customer Service Advisors taking calls for renewals,

reservations and general enquiries for library service users. Calls answered reached

16,300 in 2012/2013.

Interactive Voice Recognition was

placed on the front of this queue

which provides opening times of

libraries. This has been popular with

customers with over 5,000 calls being

answered by IVR in 2012/2013.

IVR was launched on 30 May 2012 for customers wishing to make a Revenue or a

Benefits appointment at a One Stop Shop. The IVR was placed on a new

Appointments queue (0151 233 3016). In 2012/2013 it was selected over 2,400

times as a channel of choice by customers. An IVR to request a form was launched

on 15 September 2012 for Revenue, Benefits, Elections and Educational Services.

The IVR was placed on each of these queues. It has been used on over 1,200

occasions. The Contact Centre introduced a new automated service on Friday 21

December 2012 for customers requesting information on Merseyside Waste opening

times during the Christmas Holiday period. It was used over 400 times.

In May 2012 calls for Alsop Leisure Centre into the Contact Centre as part of the

phased service take on for all the Leisure Centre telephony. This continued

throughout 2012/2013 with all Leisure Centre telephony transferring into the

Contact Centre. Calls answered reached over 116,000.

In October 2012 the Contact Centre successfully retained the national Customer Contact

Association Global Standard (Version 5). The Standard provides a framework for best

practice and quality of service in the Contact Centre Industry.

Careline Service

Careline is the social care contract centre function delivered on behalf of Liverpool City

Council. It provides a service for both Adult and Childrens Services 24 x 7 x 365. The

service responds to any social care referral, contact or emergency. It offers a full range

of; call answering, referrals, assessment, information, email response and outbound call

facility to both customers and professional staff and agencies. Careline is staffed byhighly qualified and experienced Social Care Team Leaders, Social Workers and Contact


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Centre Advisors. At all times qualified and experienced Social Workers and Team

Leaders are available for Childrens and Adult social care issues.

The Service Levels for Careline 2012/2013 included:


Target

2012/2013

Performance

Calls Answered 87.5% 90%

Total calls answered within 20 seconds

(SL20)65% 66%

Careline emails automaticallyacknowledged in two hours

100% 100%

Calls Answered by an agreed Message 100% 100%

Careline Service exceeded its targets in 2012/2013. Its other developments and

achievements included:

The Self Directed Support Unit Direct Payments transferred into Careline in April

2012. The Self Directed Support Unit manages cash payments to a Service User for

community care services they have arranged themselves. Rather than Liverpool City

Council providing or arranging the community care services that the service user has

been assessed as requiring, they receive money to enable them to arrange their

own services, allowing them more choice and control over the way care and support

needs are met. All enquiries are answered at first point of contact by Careline and

any complex queries are sent to the Self Directed Support Unit. This line is available

Monday to Friday (8am to 6.00pm). From May 2012 the Careline Service expanded

the Direct Payments Service to include service users over the age of 55. These

customers were previously managed by Age Concern. The service has received over

5,800 calls during 2012/2013.

The Occupational Therapy Assistant Service went live in September 2012. This

follows a successful 12 month pilot during which Liverpool Direct Limited provided a

range of services which support the Community Occupational

Therapy Service within Liverpool City Councils Adult Services and Health

Table 2.5: Careline Service: Service Level Agreements 2012/2013.


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Directorate. The service has handled over 3,500 Occupational Therapy Referrals in

2012/2013.

One Stop Shops

The One Stop Shops Service offers a face to face customer contact solution to a wide

range of City Council related customer enquiries. Many of the 300,000 visitors who

present across the nine One Stop Shops have their enquiry or issues resolved at First

Point of Contact.

The Service Levels for the One Stop Shops 2012/2013 included:

Definition of SLA 2012/2013Target

2012/2013Performance

Offer appointment within five working days

from date of request97% 99%

Percentage of customers seen within 15

minutes (with an appointment)95% 96%

Percentage of customers seen within 15

minutes (without an appointment) 90% 97%

Table 2.6: One Stop Shops: Service Level Agreements 2012/2013.

The One Stop Shops exceeded each of its targets during 2012/2013. Its other

achievements included taking on the management in May 2012 of a merged Library and

One Stop Shop service at three library sites; Garston, Speke (Parklands) and Walton. The

opening times of the three sites changed to incorporate the library customer demand

(which includes Saturday opening at the Garston site). Library staff transferred into

Liverpool Direct Limited and have now been trained to become Customer Service

Advisors. One Stop Shop Customer Service Advisors have also been trained in Library

Services. The three Libraries situated at Garston, Speke and Walton are now managed

and resourced by one set of staff who are generically trained to carry out both sets of

tasks. This has saved Liverpool City Council over 115K.

The One Stop Shop Service was re-assessed for the Louder than Words Charter Mark

during June 2012. This resulted in the service being awarded the Charter Mark for a

further 12 months.


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During 2012/2013 the One Stop Shop Service received over 52,100 enquiries in relation

to the Benefits Service Ten Day Promise. Over 36,800 customers, who applied for

Housing and/or Council Tax Benefit had their application processed within ten working

days, as per the Benefit Service Ten Day Promise. Table (2.7) sets out the breakdown

of the four different categories of the Ten Day Promise that were processed by the One

Stop Shop Service during 2012/2013:

Ten Day Promise Category Volume

2012/2013

Volume

(%)

New Claim 2,874 8

Change of Address 4,783 13

Final Evidence 13,605 37

Change in Circumstance 15,573 42

Total 36,835 100%

Table 2.7: Ten Day Promise Categories and Volumes 2012/2013.

Web Services

Web Services is the in house digital

development team. It offers a wide

variety of web solutions focused on

delivering the best end user experience

possible. Working closely with both

internal and external clients, the Service

focuses on applying industry best

practice whilst keeping solutions simplefor the end user. The Web Services achievements in 2012/2013 include completion in

January 2013 of the re-development of the lifestyles fitness suite website for Liverpool

City Council (Liverpool.gov.uk/lifestyles). The site has been redeveloped to offer a

vibrant and active site allowing users of the lifestyles service to quickly and easily access

information about events, classes and courses.

Other examples include consultancy work for Gloucestershire County Council during

their website redevelopment. This included detailed user task analysis and content

training for the staff of the County Council. Gloucestershire launched their new website


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The SIA Service answered

100%of calls all received within 30 seconds.

in April 2012 and have seen a 28% reduction in calls on key service lines due to the new

tasks-focused approach of the website.

In September 2012, Web Services

developed the digital services strategy

for North Ayrshire Council and is

continuing to aid in the redevelopment

of their website and associated digital

services with the aim of producing a

more customer focused website. A new

website design for Northumbria Police

was completed in January 2013. The new look gives the Police an increased ability to

communicate with residents in neighbourhoods and raise awareness of campaigns

across the force region. The Redesign is part of the continuous support that Web

Services offer Northumbria Police.

Human Resource and Payroll Service

The Human Resource and Payroll Service undertakes a range of support services

including Human Resource Consultancy Services, Employee Relations, Job Evaluation,

Equal Pay, traditional transactions, Business Support and specialist Payroll and Pension

functions. The Service manages a comprehensive intranet site which provides detailed

information and advice to employees and managers; some 24 hours a day, all year

round. Additionally, customers can speak to the Human Resource and Payroll specialists

by contacting the dedicated service centre, Connect2HRP (8am - 6pm Monday to Friday)

on behalf of Liverpool City Council. The Service deals with over 216,500 payroll

transactions a year and the payroll distributes over 265 million per annum.

The Service Levels for the Human Resources and Payroll Service 2012/2013 included:


Target

2012/2013

Performance

CRB requests turned around within two working

days of receipt of all documentation95% 100%

% of payroll errors attributable to contractor


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Target

2012/2013

Performance

Implementation of changes to employees grade

and remuneration including payment of

associated arrears

99% 100%

Notification of cessation of Local Government

Pension Scheme (LGPS) membership100% 100%

Table 2.8: Human Resource and Payroll: Contractual Service Level Agreements 2012/2013.

The Human Resource and Payroll Service exceeded all of its targets during 2012/2013.

Its other achievements included Job Evaluation, which was the implementation of the

NJC new pay and grading structure (as required by the 1977 Single Status Agreement)

for over 8,500 employees. This was delivered on time and within budget. A massive

achievement. It had been estimated that the impact of the Agreement would be that up

to 39% of employees could suffer a reduction in salary and that the total increased cost

to the City Councils wage bill could be as much as 5.4%. However, as a result of the

efforts of the team, a revised pay model was created and implemented and as a result

the increased cost to the City Councils wage bill was maintained at only 2.7%. The Job

Evaluation Appeals training programme was also successfully rolled out to all Appeals

Panel Members and it resolved 113 appeals without the need to refer to an appealhearing through a process of re-

matching employees to more suitable

roles.

The Employee Relations Team

redeployed 66 employees in to funded

posts during the year to date helping to

save the City Council 660K in potentialredundancy costs. The Employee

Relations Team continues to undertake a

proactive role in managing at risk staff on behalf of the City Council and several

initiatives have been launched in conjunction with line managers to actively reduce the

numbers of employees. This has included playing the lead role in reviewing the cases of

employees who have been on the Redeployment List for more than 20 weeks.

As part of the Discretionary Compensation Scheme, the Payroll Team completedcompensation calculations and co-ordinated the administration of all leavers. The bulk


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of the resultant costs were paid out in the 2011/2012 tax year. The City Council is now

reaping the benefits of these savings with forecasted savings estimated at 3.15 million.

The Payroll Team continues to

administer the Childcare Voucher

Scheme. This is a salary sacrifice

scheme where employees can

reduce their gross pay and benefit

from tax and National Insurance

savings. As a result of employees

participating in this scheme, the

employer's National Insurance

liability is reduced and this equates

to a value of 85K per annum. As part of its commitment to the environment, the

Payroll Team manages the Cycle to Work Scheme on behalf of Liverpool City Council.

This is a further salary sacrifice scheme and over 98 employees now participate. The

reduction in the City Council's National Insurance liability equates to a value of13K per

annum. In December 2013 the Payroll Team launched a new salary sacrifice scheme to

provide the facility for employees who have a mobile phone for business use to convert

their current payroll deductions to a salary sacrifice arrangement which will allow

savings for both employee and employer.

In October 2012, the Payroll Team successfully implemented pay changes for in excess

of8,500 employees; applied in excess of1,000 pay protection payroll adjustments and

confirmed in excess of 300 adjustments to pay allowances all following the

implementation of the national job evaluation scheme.

In February 2013, the Human Resource

and Payroll Teams successfully

launched Connect2HRP Service Deskfor all of its customers.

In March 2013, the Payroll Team

successfully implemented Pensions

Auto Enrolment. Auto Enrolment is the governments initiative to encourage employees

to join a pension scheme. In accordance with the Pensions Regulator requirements, over

14,000 letters were sent to each category of worker, including existing scheme

members and non scheme members.

Benefits Service has generated over

8.6 million in addition benefits for

Liverpool residents.


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3. People ReviewSince day one of the Partnership (in 2001) investment in staff has been viewed as a key

priority by all its stakeholders. Investmentin; training, systems, staff development,

accommodation, reward and recognition

schemes, equalities work and personal

development has been critical to the success

of Liverpool Direct Limited. This

commitment will continue and be focused

on; having the right people, with the right

training, support and encouragement to doan excellent job. This is the single most important responsibility of managers across the

Company.

Our People Strategy is based around the theme of Workforce Matters. This has been

developed with the direct involvement of staff. Workforce Matters sets out a clear

framework which is all about enabling staff to grow and reach their potential. It is about

achieving business and personal goals. Then exceeding them. It is about supporting

staff to remain focused on the customer at the heart of the organisation and ondelivering performance excellence. The strength of Liverpool Direct Limited is built

upon the foundations of its people.

The Workforce Matters has both an

Implementation Plan and Framework

delivered around seven broad themes

highlighted in the Workforce Matters

Wheel.

Workforce Matters is about helping

individuals (and managers) to realise their

full potential and to provide them with an

environment which promotes high

performance. Balanced with the right

level of support and challenge. Since

2001 significant progress has been made

in across each of the seven themes.


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Successes include:

In 2012/2013 the business had over 1200 staff on its payroll. These staff work across all

areas of the business and have excelled in all respects. The progress against these

themes is:

STARS

STARS is a Reward and Recognition scheme which staff and managers to send a Thank

You to their colleagues on a day to day basis for their good work and efforts. The

scheme taps into the positive effect of peer recognition, empowering staff to drive the

scheme and select. During 2012/2013 staff sent over 22,800 STARS containing a

personal Thank You message. In 2012/2013, over 120 monthly STARS winners and 10

quarterly STARS winners attended a presentation to receive their recognition.

Great Place to Work

Liverpool Direct Limited made a commitment to support staff by; creating, developing

and nurturing a great place to work. This includes developing our reward and

recognition framework and improving the work environment across the Partnership.

The PRIDE values are instilled across the workplace through branding of all

accommodation and embedding the values in communications.

Bright Ideas

Bright Ideas is the Staff suggestion

scheme. It encourages staff to put

forward their ideas to improve the

organisation. The Bright Ideas

scheme helps to harness the ideas ofstaff to improve services, processes,

procedures or new products to customers, whilst recognising and rewarding staff for

their insight and enthusiasm. During 2012/2013 over 650 Bright Ideas were submitted

by staff. A selection of ideas submitted by staff and successfully implemented include:

Improvements to the backdating process for Housing Benefit to enable staff to

select from a list of predefined criteria for refusal when communicating with

customers. This has ensured quality and consistency throughout the service andsaved processing time for the assessor.

Revenues Services collected over

15 millionin corporate debt during 2012/2013.


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A stock of mobile telephony devices to be issued on a temporary basis when a

customers device is being fixed or replaced. This enables Connect2ICT to spend

more time working on the fault whilst ensuring the customer is not impacted;

reducing disruption and ultimately improving customer service.

Enhanced processes for staff taking maternity leave to ensure that user profiles

and information are suspended for this period. This idea prevents loss of

important information, prevents multiple emails to the customer and saves ICT

time and resources.

Employer of Choice

A strong reputation as an Employer of Choice is key to attracting and retaining the best

people. We offer first class terms of employment to all members of staff. To support

this work during 2012/2013 we have:

Launched a fully interactive recruitment portal, Connect2Recruitment, to improve

the recruitment experience for candidates.

Developed the Apprenticeship and Traineeship Programme to provide more

aspirational opportunities for young people in the community.

The successful Apprenticeship and

Traineeship Programme provides work

opportunities for young people to gain

on the job experience whilst

undertaking a nationally recognised

accreditation. During 2012/2013, the

number of apprentices and traineesengaged in the scheme reached 50. Over

1 million has been invested in the

Apprenticeship and Traineeship Programme during 2012/2013.

To continue to support this work we have planned in 2013/2014, to; review 'hard to fill'

posts from each service area, continuous review of employment policies to ensure that

all policies and procedures are compliant with employment legislation and HR best

practice at all times and retain our Investor in People (Gold) Standard.


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Learning Culture

A positive learning culture helps employees to take personal responsibility for their own

development. It helps people to understand their strengths and to take account of their

learning styles. To support staff during 2012/2013 we maintained a comprehensive

Learning Management System (LMS) which provides a full catalogue of learning

opportunities and access to all forms of e-learning. The approach is shaped around the

requirements of both our people and the business.

To continue to promote this learning culture during 2013/2014; a review of the current

Learning Management System will be undertaken to assess the effectiveness of the

system and identify potential for improvement; implement the actions from this review

to deliver an effective Learning

Management System; and implement a

clear Management Framework to be

integrated with the Managers' Review

process.

Valuing Diversity

Equality and diversity is an all-embracing

theme. It impacts on every part of the partnership (eg. recruitment, how we work

together and how we deal with customers). During 2012/2013 we continued our work

in this area to ensure that we embed good equality principles and practice into our

business, as well as meeting our legal and contractual duties with regards to equality

and diversity. We established more training and development opportunities for staff to

maintain an awareness of equality and diversity. We also embedded further equality

and diversity in the recruitment process in line with industry best practice.

Workforce Planning

Our approach to workforce planning is to better understand our workforce (eg. sickness

absence, referral process for staff leaving the organisation). During 2012/2013 we

implemented a Succession Planning Programme for managers, and continued to

monitor attrition.

It allows a focus to be kept on the areas of; succession planning, staff and career

development, recruitment and training.


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Secondment

The approach to staffing in Liverpool Direct

Limited is based on a secondment model

which is both inclusive and comprehensive.

The approach seeks to ensure that

seconded staff retain their national terms

and conditions, membership of the local

government pension scheme and return to

their original employer at the end of any

partnership. Our approach seeks to ensure

that our seconded workforce is consulted,

engaged and committed. To support this,

during 2012/2013 we:

Established a robust set of procedures around secondment and referral.

Maintained a regular reporting function to support our practices in the area of

secondment.

Launched the 'Insight' Internship Programme to support Liverpool City Council

managers to complete a placement within the Partnership.

Quality Framework

The Quality Framework is based on the

design, implementation and delivery of a

number of specified management quality

systems across the organisation based onnational and international quality

standards.

During 2012/2013, we achieved Investors

in People The Wider Framework Gold

Standard. The wider framework approach is focused on identifying the organisation s

priorities and meeting specific objectives in terms of equality, people management and

learning and development. The achievement of Gold recognition is the highest level ofachievement within the framework.

The Contact Centre maintained high

levels of performance throughout

2012/2013 the number of all calls

answered was

95%


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Our focus during 2013/2014 will be on maintaining accreditation to the following:

Accreditation Description

Contact Centre

Association (CCA)

Global Standard

This formal accreditation leads the development and

delivery of customer service within customer contact

centres. It provides key principles for good practice

and continuous improvement, and offers an

opportunity to benchmark both operational and

customer performance.

ISO 9001 QualityManagement

Systems

The internationally recognised standard for the quality

management of businesses. It applies to the processes

that create and control the products and services an

organisation supplies and prescribes systematic

control of activities to ensure that the needs and

expectations of customers are met.

OHSAS 18001

Occupational Health

and Safety

Management System

OHSAS 18001 is the internationally recognised

standard and the benchmark for Health and Safety

Management System certification. Certification to this

prestigious standard assures that robust health and

safety policies, procedures and systems are in place;

promotes a safe and healthy working environment by

providing a framework that allows an organisation to

consistently identify and control its health and safety

risks, aids legislative and regulatory compliance and

improves overall performance.

ISO 15489

Information and

Documentation -

Records

Management

The International Standard ensures that an

organisations records (both paper and electronic) are

properly maintained, easily accessible and correctly

documented from their creation right through to

ultimate disposal, be that archiving, imaging or

destruction.


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ISO 22301 Societal

Security, Business

ContinuityManagement

Systems

The International standard for business continuity

management specifies requirements for setting up

and managing an effective business continuitymanagement system (BCMS) to define the business

continuity management programme.

ISO 27001 ICT

Information Security

Management

Systems

ISO 27001 aims to ensure that adequate controls are

in place to address the confidentiality, integrity and

availability of information. The standard is designed to

ensure the selection of adequate and proportionate

security controls, which help the organisation toprotect its information assets and gives confidence to

any interested parties.

Louder Than Words

Charter Mark

RNIDs prestigious Louder Than Words charter

informs people of the organisations commitment to

providing the best possible practice to deaf/hard of

hearing customers and staff. It demonstrates to the

public that the organisation takes the needs of itscustomers and employees seriously.

Payroll Quality

Partnership

The Payroll Quality Partnership (PQP) is a quality

accreditation from the Chartered Institute of Payroll

Professionals (CIPP) for organisations who can

demonstrate, through a rigorous process of

assessment, that they are committed to and delivering

best practice in the development of payroll people.


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Investors in People

The Wider

Framework Gold

Standard

The IIP Standard helps to ensure equality, people

management and learning and development within an

organisation. The new wider framework approach isfocused on identifying the organisations priorities and

applying the framework towards meeting these

specific objectives and introduced three levels of

recognition to acknowledge and celebrate higher

levels of achievement within the framework. The

achievement of Gold recognition reflects the number

of evidence requirements the organisation has met.

Customer Service

Excellence (CSE)

Developed to offer public services a practical tool for

driving customer-focused change within their

organisation. The standard tests in great depth those

areas that research has indicated are a priority for

customers, with particular focus on delivery,

timeliness, information, professionalism and staff

attitude. There is also emphasis placed on developing

customer insight, understanding the users experienceand robust measurement of service satisfaction.

Advice Quality

Standard

The Advice Quality Standard is a national quality

standard for information, advice and legal services.

Accreditation to this standard demonstrates to the

public, who need benefit related information, advice

and support that they can rely on receiving a quality

assured service.

Table 3.1: 2013/2014 Quality Framework.

All Services have embraced the Quality Framework into the operation. Quality is an

essential component of the way we do business. To ensure this is maintained across all

areas of the business, we have established and trained quality champions within each

area and developed an internal reviewer programme to ensure rigorous internal

auditing is undertaken to safeguard continued compliance to the standards.


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Corporate Social Responsibility

The Partnership is committed to conducting its business responsibly. We recognise and

embrace the responsibilities we have; on the environment, to our people, customers

and the local community. Corporate Social Responsibility is an integral part of all our

business operations and we continually monitor and proactively seek new ways of

developing our approach.

Charitable Causes

Staff from all areas of Liverpool Direct Limited have been involved in fundraising for two

Chosen Charities, as voted for by staff themselves:

The Lily Centre: Is a Breast Cancer Support Group run by women

who have themselves experienced breast cancer. They give their

time voluntarily at the centre to provide a pleasant environment for

women and men to meet and gain emotional and physical support.

The Newborn Appeal: Is a charity which supports the Neonatal unit at Liverpool

Womens NHS Foundation Trust to improve the

quality of care available. The charity also supports

research and purchases specialised equipment for

sick babies over and above the NHS provision.

Fundraising activities have included; dress down days, fancy dress competitions, cake

baking, quizzes and many more. A total of14000 was raised for these charities during

2012/2013. Liverpool Direct Limited staff also supported two national charities during

2012/2013, Children in Need and Comic Relief, raising 4000.

In April 2013 staff said farewell to the 2012/2013 chosen charities and decided which

charities they wanted to support in 2013/2014. Staff were asked to nominate two local

charities, one adult and one childrens, that support our people and are based in the

Merseyside area. Compiling the nominations into one form, staff were invited to vote

for who they wanted to support throughout 2013/2014. The two charities nominated

by staff and selected in the vote are The Walton Centre and Ronald McDonald House:

The Walton Centre offers a world class service in diagnosing

and treating injuries and illnesses affecting the brain, spine and


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peripheral nerves and muscles; and in helping people suffering from long term

neurological conditions.

Ronald McDonald House Charities keep families together so children in

hospital can get the love and comfort they need, by offering free

accommodation to parents and carers so that a family member is never far

away. We will be supporting the Ronald McDonald House located at Alder

Hey Hospital in West Derby which has looked after over 16,000 families

since opening in 1993.

Liverpool Direct Limited looks forward to supporting these two very worthy charities in

2013/2014.

Duke of Edinburghs Award

As part of this commitment Liverpool Direct Limited works closely with the Duke of

Edinburgh (DofE) Award North West with the

aim of supporting the development of the DofE

Edinburgh's Awards Programme. During the past

three years Liverpool Direct Limited has

continued to support the personal development of young people within the community

through the partnership with the Duke of Edinburghs (DofE) Award North West.

Donating 25,000 per year to the scheme, the partnership has witnessed hundreds of

pupils from Schools across the city achieve the award at varying levels, enriching their

development and providing them with valuable skills and experiences. In addition to

supporting local schools in delivering the scheme, we also encourage and fund a

number of our own employees to carry out and complete the DofE Gold Award.

During 2012/2013 a group of young people, primarily made up of apprentices,

embarked upon their Gold Award. An additional group is currently undertaking the Duke

of Edinburghs Award Leadership Programme through which they are trained to mentor

and support young people to complete the Award at various levels.

Environmental Management

As part of our commitment to reduce our workforces carbon footprint, we have

embedded many environmental activities throughout the companys operations. These

include promoting greener transport options to our employees, investing in green and


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cost effective alternatives for meetings such as telephone conference facilities thus

reducing the need to travel, a waste recycling scheme and a dedicated Save the Planet

area on our intranet providing employees with environmental news/information,

money saving suggestions and environmental awareness days which we encourage staff

to participate in.

During 2012/2013, Liverpool Direct Limited made significant achievements in the area

of environmental management:

Improved recycling facilities have been provided for staff to use, such as colour

coded bins for recycling paper, card, plastic and batteries.

Further audio conferencing facilities were provided to avoid unnecessary travelling.

A Cycle to Work Scheme was launched which enables staff to purchase a bicycle

through a salary sacrifice scheme. Over 80 members of staff successfully applied for

the scheme.

Expanded Save the Planet intranet

pages were provided with

information and tips for staff to be

more environmentally friendly in

the workplace.

Liverpool Direct Limited recognises that

its excellent performance is directly

linked to its commitment to developing its workforce and positive relationships with its

people.

Our people are our most effective ambassadors and represent a key source of long termperformance excellence and competitive advantage. We understand the role of our

people in exhibiting our approach to Quality and Corporate Social Responsibility to bring

real value to these elements of our business and enable us to consistently improve our

business processes.

We will continue to develop, engage and consult with our people with the support of

the framework set out through Workforce Matters to ensure that we continue to

harness the commitment and insight of our workforce to strengthen and develop ourbusiness.


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4. Planned Developments for 2013/2014It is important to recognise the challenges of the economic climate we operate within. It

is expected that 2013/2014 will see further funding cuts at a time of increasing demand.

The challenge will be to continue to deliver the highest levels of performance whilst still

delivering real added value, further price reductions (which our customers are now

focused on) and represent real, long term

value.

To support this, the principle of high

quality people supported by high quality

ICT platforms will continue as a key

priority.

A set of financial targets has been agreed

by the Board of Liverpool Direct Limited

for 2013/2014. These are based on revenue and new business won to be delivered in

2013/2014:

Description

Actual

2012/2013

(million)

Target

2013/2014

(million)

Revenue 86.1 80.0

Sales Order Value 36.1 15.0

Table 4.1: 2013/2014 Financial Targets.

Whilst these figures are less in real terms than 2012/2013 they remain challenging

financial targets. They reflect the difficult times Liverpool Direct Limited operates

within. They require Liverpool Direct Limited to be innovative in the services that it

provides, develops and operates. It will require the customer base to continue to be

developed and new services offered to organisations outside of Liverpool City Council.


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Planned Investments

Liverpool Direct Limited will continue to actively invest in the services provided to

Liverpool City Council and (other

customers) in 2013/2014. Planned

investments for 2013/2014 are

estimated to be over 8 million.

These investments will support and

help protect future performance and

help deliver immediate (and in year)

savings for Liverpool City Council. It is

the belief of Liverpool Direct Limited

that further real and significant savings can be delivered to Liverpool City Council and its

customers through the hard work of its staff. The 4.5 million price cut in 2012/2013

now needs to be built upon and additional added value delivered in year.

Performance Service Levels

For 2013/2014 the following enhanced Service LevelAgreements have been agreed:


Target

2013/2014

Target

Revenues: Visits or make electronic checks on

void properties (every 26 weeks) or in the case

of long term voids (ie. empty more than 1

year), every 52 weeks (Council Tax).

95% 97.5%

Revenues: Undertake visits or make electronic

checks on void properties (every 26 weeks) or

in the case of long term voids (ie. empty more

than 1 year), every 52 weeks (NNDR).

95% 97.5%

Contact Centre: % of all calls received

answered by IVR.5% 10%

Careline: Total Calls answered. 87.5% 90%


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Target

2013/2014

Target

ICT: % Customer Satisfaction with ICT. 96% 97%

Customer Access: Maintenance of broken

links as measured by SiteImprove: to keep the

number of invalid links on

www.liverpool.gov.uk website below 1%.


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These enhanced (increased) service levels are at no additional cost to Liverpool City

Council and represent real added value.

Planned Performance Improvements

As customer expectations increase the business will be challenged to maintain service

excellence in line with the increasing demands and needs of our customers. Planned

improvements in 2013/2014 will help to further embed a performance culture across

the business. The Business Improvement Plans set these out on an annual basis. These

are comprehensive and examples include:

Business Improvem

Documents

LDL Annual Review.pdf