Purpose

 
This
report outlines a proposal to appoint Civica UK Ltd for the
provision of support that will allow the Revenues and Benefits
service to clear a substantial work backlog built up over the
preceding 12 months. The volume of outstanding work is not at a
level that is sustainable in the long term. There is now potential
to affect residents in both making and receiving payments from the
Council. Staff are currently having to spend a considerable amount
of time dealing with chase up calls and contacts. The main cause
for this is additional work imposed by central government in
delivering fuel rebate payments to Wirral residents.

Decision

The
Director of Finance has agreed to approve the engagement of Civica
UK Ltd via a direct award for a contract of a term of 12 months to
7 July 2024  to provide the services
summarised in paragraph 3.7 of this report using the Lot 3 G-cloud
13 procurement Framework.
 

Reasons for the decision

The Revenues and Benefits service has built up a
significant backlog of work over the past 12 months. This is due
mainly to the imposition of 4 fuel rebates schemes by central
government during 2022-23. These schemes required over 150,000
payments to be made to over 120,000 households across the
Wirral.
 
Many of the contacts received by the
service by phone and email are now chasing previous contacts. This
is impacting on residents’ ability to contact the Council by
phone. In addition, the service simultaneously has undergone a
service review. This has led to a number
of vacancies in processing teams being identified, which are
currently being filled.
 
The Government has belatedly provided
additional funding of £224,146 for the work undertaken in
delivering Fuel Rebate payments in the summer of 2022. Civica On-Demand service was evaluated against
other providers on Lot 2 of the Government G-Cloud framework and
provided the most flexible offer. This provides variable rates due
to type work as opposed to fixed day rates, coupled with resource
availability.
 
The proposals within the report will
provide increased income for the council. It will reduce late
billing for council tax. The proposals will reduce delays in paying
Housing Benefit and Council Tax and reduce the amount of recovery
action for non-payment of council tax.
 
More resources into actioning changes in
circumstance will reduce the scope for over and underpayment and
reduce chase up calls freeing up resources to concentrate on
ongoing work.

Alternative options considered

Increase Workforce
capacity – recruit more staff. 
This is not within scope, given the requirement to achieve budget
efficiencies totalling £750k in 2022/23.
 
Engage external
Revenues and Benefits processing support, procured via a managed
service to remotely process work. This could be done either through
the purchase of a pre-determined number of processing
‘hours’ or by ring-fencing specific work types for
completion within an agreed timeframe.
 
The option to do
nothing was not considered given the impact the backlog is having
upon customer experience and potential risks associated with
processing delays.