COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2014
02
APPLICATION FORM
Please refer to the ‘2014 Guidance for Applicants’
before completing this application form.
The application form is split over four sections. It is up to you to decide the content and length of each section, but your application must not exceed three pages in total (excluding the cover pages).
Please ensure that your application covers the key criteria that we are looking for and is effectively presented. Any questions relating to your application or the submission process should be directed to or 0131 474 9275.
The deadline for submission of entries is 5pm on Friday 18 October 2013.
Submitting Your Application Form
We have introduced a new online application portal for the 2014 awards. You should therefore submit this application form electronically using our online form.
PLEASE PROVIDE SOME DETAILS ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION:
CATEGORY APPLIED FOR / 1 - Service Innovation ImprovementPROJECT NAME
(as you wish to see it published) / Integrated Services Delivery Model – a modern approach to customer service
LEAD ORGANISATION / Fife Council
DEPARTMENT/TEAM / Corporate Services, Customer Service Operations
PARTICIPANT NAMES OR PARTNER ORGANISATIONS / Andrew Stokes / Karen Henderson
Christine Westwater / Heather Kirkwood
Karen Young / Sandra Shire
Rosemary Hamilton / Dorothy Browse
June Souter
CONTACT NAME / Diarmuid Cotter, Council Customer Services Manager
CONTACT DETAILS / / 03451 55 55 55 ext. 480050
CAN WE PUBLISH THIS APPLICATION FORM ON OUR WEBSITE? / YES
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / In one short paragraph please describe this project is about, what it has achieved, and why it is delivering excellence.
Fife has over 70 face to face customer access points, made up of 21 Local Offices and over 50 Libraries. For a number of years customers have been able to access a broad range of services via our network of Local Offices. The aim of this project was to expand that offering to include Library services. Traditionally, for Council services such as housing enquiries, benefits and welfare advice, concessionary travel, debt management advice, registration services etc, customers visit a Local Office. For Library services such as book issues, IT taster sessions, reading sessions, use of public access pc’s etc, they visit a library. These are all in different locations, usually operating different opening hours and served by different staff. This project was about delivering all of these services in a joined-up, integrated approach. We achieved this in 3 locations across Fife:
· Inverkeithing Civic Centre
· Methil Library & Local Office
· Leven Library & Local Office
We are delivering excellence not just to our customers but also to the organisation, staff working generically delivering the full range of services in the same location delivers efficiencies and maximises our resources. In our Methil/Leven area savings of almost £160K per year have been realised due to the rationalisation of buildings as part of this project. Customers are greeted by Customer Service Advisors in new, modern, customer friendly buildings designed to meet their needs. We are open extended hours, including mid-week late nights and Saturday mornings, so our customers can access us more easily, rather than traditional Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.
PLANNING / What is your project about, and why is it important? What are you aiming to achieve, and how does this fit with the bigger picture? Does it tackle the issues that matter most to your community or your organisation?
Fife like all other local authorities in the UK are faced with our biggest budget challenges ever. This requires all of us to be more imaginative and inventive when it comes to service delivery. Maintaining or indeed improving services with a reducing budget is challenging, but challenges present opportunities. This project links with the organisations objective within the Council Plan of “Reforming Fife’s Public Services”. The project also gave us the opportunity to achieve the objectives of our Customer Management Strategy, by delivering an integrated working model to ensure frontline customer services were better, faster, and cheaper for the customer, and for the organisation. This was planned through strong links and partnership working with our stakeholders; our staff groups, Trade Unions, Library Services and our HR Team.
Fife Council also has an Asset Rationalisation Strategy to reduce the number of Council buildings from over 90 down to around 30. This project worked in tandem with that strategy and helped it achieve its objectives. We set out measurable targets to achieve in those 3 locations mentioned. The planned outcomes were to deliver new integrated models where customers could access Library and Council services under one roof, served by the same staff member at the same point of contact. An increase in quality customer services with regards accuracy rates for large volume business areas such as Housing/Council Tax Benefit applications and Registration Services (births, deaths, marriages) was planned, reducing duplication by getting it right first time.
Prior to this project, in the locations identified as in scope for integration, customers had to access services in the following manner:
Inverkeithing
· Library services were delivered in a stand-alone location in Hope Street
· Council Services were delivered in a stand-alone Local Office in Queen Street
In October 2008 they both moved into our new integrated building at the Civic Centre.
Methil
· Library services and Council services were co-located in the same building in Wellesley Road. But each had separate areas of the building, desks and opening hours, there was no joined up working or integrated approach.
In April 2011 the new integrated Library & Local Office opened to customers.
Leven
· Library services were delivered in a stand-alone location in Durie Street
· Council services were delivered in a stand-alone Local Office in Carberry House
In November 2012 they both moved into our new integrated building in Durie Street.
DELIVERING / How have you carried out your project? How did you ensure that this was done effectively? What are you doing to continue to improve?
To ensure effective delivery the programme was divided into 3 distinct projects:
· Locations Strategy Project - developing the business case for where our new integrated locations should be
· Design Project - developing the design of these new integrated facilities by using core design principles, based on customer feedback
· People Project - undertaking a Managing Workforce Change agenda to transfer affected staff onto a new generic “Customer Service Advisor” job profile
The project to implement delivery was managed through Fife Council’s project management framework which is based on PRINCE2 methodology. Project managers were identified and dedicated to the projects from start to delivery. The project managers were responsible for producing project documentation which was approved by the project board who met monthly to discuss the projects. The project sponsor and project managers were in close communication and a project update report was produced and discussed weekly. Where any high scoring issues or risks were identified, an exception report with suggested solutions was generated by the project managers for discussion and approval for corrective action with board members.
In order to ensure effective delivery we engaged with customers and staff. This was achieved by the following:
· Design Project - we looked at customer feedback from our annual Customer Survey, where customers highlighted some key areas for improvement. They wanted to be seen in modern welcoming environments and for certain areas of business, to be offered an appointment in a private interview room at a time convenient to them.
· People Project - we engaged with staff in conjunction with Trade Unions and held communication events, issuing letters to all those affected explaining the objectives of the process, why we were doing it and what we hoped to achieve. As a result, in April 2013 all staff volunteered to transfer to our new generic Customer Service Advisor job profile, which included transferring to the new terms and conditions (working mid-week late nights until 7pm and Saturday mornings) .
· People Project – one objective was to develop a training programme in conjunction with those staff groups affected. Engaging with them ensured buy-in and effective 2-way communication. This ensured we delivered targeted training on the areas they needed, to be able to deliver high quality, customer focussed services. The introduction of a new Customer Management System (Lagan) in February 2012 gave us the opportunity to use script flows as a tool, resulting in less need for resource intensive hands-on training.
To ensure continuous improvement we held discussions with our stakeholders, mainly customers and staff, to gather feedback and lessons learned in order to keep making improvements. This feedback has resulted in some minor alterations mainly in relation to the design layout of our buildings. The Customer Service Point at Leven Library & Local Office has been altered to form 2 split desks, and now receives very positive customer and staff feedback.
INNOVATION & LEADING PRACTICE / Why is your project innovative? How is it helping to prepare for the future? What is happening to help other organisations benefit from your approach?
This project was innovative in deciding to take a holistic approach to customer service and generic frontline service delivery. Our research when looking at other local authorities told us no other organisation nationally has developed a similar operating model whereby customers can access the same broad range of face to face services delivered by generic staff. In our locations detailed above, a customer can access traditional Library Services, Council Services and Registration Services in the same building, by the same staff member as part of the same interaction with us i.e. they can pick up a library book, a housing application form and register a birth, death, marriage all at their first point of contact. The project, being first implemented in October 2008, has helped us prepare for future budget challenges by focussing us to look at alternative delivery models to frontline service delivery. Today, we are in discussions with other public sector organisations in Fife about the potential of rolling this out to more locations across the kingdom. We have developed a Customer Contact Strategy as an enabler to deliver this. We believe this is the future working model many local authorities and indeed other public sector organisations will follow, which may be brought into focus more with the budget challenges and efficiency savings faced by all public sector bodies.
Other organisations have heard about what work we are doing in Fife, recently Aberdeen City Council, Newcastle City Council and North Lanarkshire Council have engaged with us about our innovative approach to integrated customer service delivery. They are looking at using our model for future service delivery in their respective authorities and we are happy to support them.
RESULTS & IMPACT / What impact are you having, or expect to have? How are you measuring this, and what does this tell you? Are you delivering what you set out to achieve?
The impact of delivering integrated services has resulted in revenue savings to the Council, which means we can meet the main objective of our Asset Rationalisation Programme. It also delivers year on year financial savings with regards to running costs of buildings. As part of the rationalisation in the Methil/Leven area, the Council has achieved savings of £110K in staff costs and £48K per annum in revenue costs due to having fewer buildings to occupy and run.
Our performance monitoring reporting framework shows the following:
· Increase in Housing/Council Tax Benefit application accuracy (which accounts for 35% of overall business) from below 70% in 2010/11 to over 98% in 2012/13
· Registration services (15% of overall business) prior to this project was around 94% in 2010/11, now regularly achieves 99% accuracy
In relation to Library services, nationally Libraries have seen a decrease in the number of book issues
due to the impact of the digital age and the abolition of the Netbook Agreement. However the
services offered by Libraries have been rebalanced to include EzFife pc bookings, IT Taster Sessions,
Adult Reading Group Sessions, Bookbug/Story time Events and Family History searches. In Methil
for 2009/10 there were 8702 EzFife pc bookings, this increased to 10,586 in 2012/13. In
Inverkeithing for 2009/10 10,723 customers accessed EzFife pc’s, this figure increased to 11,241 in
2012/13. These services are making a real different to people’s lives. Customers regularly offer
compliments and positive comments from their experience of doing business with us, we capture
these in our Customer Management System. The quote below is from a customer who visited our
Methil building in August this year:
“Mrs Elder wishes to say that the help from Darryl was very much appreciated and wants to thank her for her help. It was pleasant talking to Darryl in such a nice welcoming office, and it was very obvious that Darryl wished to help her as much as possible”
Our results evidence we are delivering high quality customer services, due to our project planning,
development and execution being successful. We have delivered what we set out to achieve.
NEXT STEPS
ü Have you answered the criteria set out in the guidance?
ü Is your application form 3 pages or less. Anything more, including appendices, will be automatically rejected)
ü Has your application form been authorised by an appropriate person?
ü Have you indicated whether you wish the application form to be published?
ü Have you provided details for someone we can contact about your application?
SUBMITTING YOUR APPLICATION
PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION BY 18 OCTOBER 2013 USING OUR ONLINE APPLICATIONS PORTAL: