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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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Definition of SLA2012/2013
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:
Definition of SLA2012/2013
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:
Definition of SLA2012/2013
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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Definition of SLA2012/2013
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:
Definition of SLA2012/2013
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:
Definition of SLA2012/2013
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:
Definition of SLA2012/2013
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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Definition of SLA2012/2013
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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Accreditation Description
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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Accreditation Description
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:
Definition of SLA2012/2013
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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Definition of SLA2012/2013
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