Agenda item

Committee Members were provided with an update on the progress of the Thames Valley Transactional Service Centre partnership with arvato for the period April 2014 to August 2014. In particular:

• arvato had undertaken significant organisational changes over the last nine months to better allow the pursuance of additional business within the Thames Valley region.
• arvato were expecting to retain 50% of the recently ended 2014 NVQ’s in full time roles and were in the process of bringing on a further 10 NVQ roles, as per the partnership agreement with the Council.
• arvato continued to actively support Slough Aspire in an effort to encourage business growth
• Two Neighbourhood Benefit Advisors had been appointed, to ensure the maximisation of benefit take up across the borough by providing a more local accessible and tailored service. 
•  Details regarding the number of apprentices employed by arvato to date were outlined and Members informed that at the end of year three, arvato will have employed 20 apprentices in total, thereby exceeding their contractual commitments to date.
• Key Performance reporting for services within the scope of the contract were highlighted. In particular it was noted that:

i)  the year end activities were successfully completed, including updating all benefit claims, notifying customers, applying the new Council Tax and Business rates charges and dispatching bills in time for a 1^st April instalment.

ii)  Joint working with the Council’s procurement and finance team to implement the Council’s NO PO NO PAY policy to ensure that invoices were processed and paid at a much speedier and efficient rate.

iii)  Payroll support for all staff working on the elections completed successfully.

iv)  Legislative changes relating to auto enrolment of staff onto the Council’s pension scheme.

v)  Implementation of the new IV Log Queue management system for the front of house.

vi)  Paperless direct debit for council tax and business rates for telephone customers had now gone live for the back office service.

vii)  ICT support for the Council’s election process in terms of new equipment.

Members were reminded that the transfer of ICT services to arvato were completed in December 2013 and that the Programme Management Team were currently working to ascertain a baseline position of all service improvements that were currently within the scope of the partnership and develop a Service Improvement Plan. It was noted that arvato had employed two new project managers to assist in providing project management expertise for the programme of activity.

It was brought to Members’ attention that given the current significant financial pressures facing the Council, collection of council tax remained a high priority. To ensure that the Council’s priorities remained at the heart of the partnership, an agreement had been made with arvato to increase recovery action for non paying residents. This had resulted in an increase in court summons being issued in order to secure the debt with the overarching aim of increasing the in year overall collection rate. A Member requested details relating to statistics for collection rate targets for residential and business council tax arrears and the timeframe and process relating to recovery of council tax. It was agreed that the information would be circulated to Committee Members. 

Committee Members requested that details regarding financial savings that had been realised to date to be provided.  It was reported that a number of projects were currently being implemented, including a reduction in the number of IT servers, which when completed would result in realisation of savings to the Council.  

Concern was expressed as to whether the Customer Service Centre (CSC) was able to respond and deal with enquiries in an efficient and timely manner, given that the rate for calls that were answered was 70%. It was explained that whilst significant improvements had been made, with calls answered for the same period in the previous year at 61%, a number of changes had been made in work practices to improve the service further. An annual season plan had been put together to anticipate peaks and troughs at the CSC including council tax bills going out and school admission queries.

Resolved:  That the update report be noted.