Groby residents may find that their council tax and benefits services are handled by an enlarged office at Hinckley following a decision to merge the function with two other district councils. It is forecast that the three councils could make savings of nearly £2 million over six years. The new arrangements could start as early as May 2011. Staff and unions have been receiving weekly updates about the proposal, with more consultation with staff due to take place.

On Thursday 30 September the full meeting of Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council decided to approve sharing its revenues (council tax and business rates billing and collection) and benefits service (payment of council tax and housing benefits) with Harborough District Council and North West Leicestershire District Council.

New service based in Hinckley

It is proposed that the combined revenues and benefits team would be centralised at Hinckley’s refurbished Atkins Building as part of the proposed transition. It is claimed that improvements in technology will give residents more choice over how they access benefits, and applications would be dealt with more quickly, as staff workloads will be shared between the councils, boosting staff cover during holiday, maternity leave or sickness, and reducing the need to recruit interim staff from agencies.

The proposal would see no initial reduction to staff, with reassurances given to employees that there will be a “job for everyone” in the new structure, however natural turnover in the future, as staff move on or retire, will provide opportunities for further savings.

“We have had to look hard at how we can reduce our costs, while offering an improved service for our residents," said Cllr Stuart Bray, Leader of Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council. " We already share our IT service with Oadby and Wigston and Legal Services with Blaby, Oadby & Wigston and North Warwickshire councils and sharing these services has proven extremely cost-effective.”

Other councils have merged offices

Such arrangements are not new, as Gary L Watson, Deputy Chief Executive of the Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation| points out. " I can confirm is that such arrangements are becoming commonplace in all areas of the public sector. The partnerships are seen as an alternative to outsourcing with the aim of reducing costs by economies of scale and in the main they have been successful in achieving this."

One of the most notable is The Anglian Partnership - involving Breckland, Forest Heath and East Cambridgeshire councils. The partnership has saved over £1 million since 2003 and also provides consultancy, training & resilience services to other Local Authorities, private companies & external agencies.

Will customer service suffer?

The Borough Council has recently issued figures showing that it is one of the top performing local authorities in the whole of England, Scotland and Wales when it comes to handling council tax and housing benefit claims. During 2009/10 the council took an average of 15 days to process each new benefit claim, which was bettered by only 10 other councils out of a total of 378. In addition, it took the council an average of four days to process a change of circumstances (only nine out of 378 councils did better) and six days to process new claims and changes (only seven out of 378 councils did better).

However, the proposed reorganisation is a massive project and the challenge that will face the Council is to maintain these standards whilst going through a major restructuring of the service.

"One of the management aims of the new service will be to improve levels of service to the public throughout the area in addition to saving money," explained a spokesman for the Council. "Performance will be continuously monitored to ensure that customer standards are maintained to the level already established by Hinckley & Bosworth."

But the 2009/10 figures show that the one of the other councils in the merger falls short of the performance of Hinckley and Bosworth. For example It handles new claims in 40 days (HBBC just 15 days) and changes in 13 days (HBBC 4 days). Managers will have to plan the transition well to ensure that the residents of the Borough are not adversely affected by the new arrangements at a time when household budgets are under increasing pressure.

September 2010