Issue - meetings

Report of the Head of Finance (attached)

Purpose: to review the performance of Capita in providing financial services during the review period of 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2013.and make any recommendations to the Cabinet member for finance.

The committee considered the report of the Head of Finance setting out Capita’s performance in delivering the elements of the financial services contract from 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2013.

Mr Paul Howden, Revenues and Benefits Manager, Mr Darren Keen, Capita contract manager, and Mr David Dodds, Cabinet member, introduced the report and answered questions from the committee as follows:

·          The Cabinet member was pleased to see for the first time ever a full set of excellent ratings. He congratulated Capita on their performance particularly on improving performance in processing benefits.

·          The take-up of council tax e-billing was higher than in other councils, but still only ten per cent. The reasons were not known, but there had been no campaign to encourage people to switch.

·          The revenues and benefits service customer satisfaction survey was underway. Customer satisfaction had been rated good because there was not enough evidence to award a higher rating. The council’s main residents’ survey had not been undertaken in 2012/13 because of a lack of capacity.

·          The revenues and benefits call-centre was pro-actively managed to move staff from quieter to busier areas and have enough staff available to handle calls. However it was always hard to manage the inevitable peaks in calls on Mondays and around the times when all councils issued bills and central changes were introduced. It was not possible simply to hire ad-hoc temporary staff as training was required before they could be effective, and there was eventually a lack of space to put staff. Providing a better service at peak times had a cost attached. 

·          There were several stages in detecting and stopping fraudulent claims. Data matching between agencies picked up discrepancies; national initiatives and calls from the public identified fraud; and Capita staff referred cases which seemed suspicious for checking. A range of sanctions up to jail sentences were used as well as requiring the money to be paid back.

·          Of those who had been over-paid, about 60 per cent had arrangements to pay this back in small weekly amounts; 20 per cent were in the process of setting up arrangements; and the remainder of debts were written off or dealt with by legal means.

·          Fewer reminders for unpaid debts had been issued because of the transfer of the garden waste service to payment by direct debit; residents and customers paying quickly for services; and reasonably good payment times from larger organisations.

·          The different figures for the percentages of calls answered in 20 seconds referred to the revenues and benefits call centre (81 per cent) and the central switchboard (87per cent).

·          The switchboard had been upgraded to offer automated call options to direct callers, an option to connect to a named officer, and pointers to the website. The time to answer calls was measured after the automatic options section finished.

·          The savings from moving to one switchboard for both councils had been passed on to the council.

·          KPT2 measured the time taken to see everyone who came to reception, with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13