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Driving up efficiency
Te London Borough of Harrow has managed to save £45m over the past three years through a combination of technology innovations and new management techniques. Te same principles that
have been so effective across the whole council are now being applied to the parking department in a bid to improve efficiency and value for money. As a council, Harrow issues
more than 110,000 penalty charge notices (PCNs) per year. As a result of the new technology and processes in place, it has reduced overall staff costs by 30 per cent, as well as boosting productivity by more than 40 per cent per annum compared with previous years. Staff are now able to issue 30-35 PCN- related letters daily, against 15 per day in the past. Fern Silverio,
divisional director – collections and housing benefits, said: ‘Harrow’s parking services administration has a highly transaction- driven function, like departments such as housing benefits and local taxation. We had already made massive efficiency gains in revenues and benefits. We knew that the same model of transformation could be applied to parking. ‘Despite the
management team having no parking
10 DECEMBER 2010
experience, we have proved that, in a department dealing with finances, a combination of automating parts of the process and a clear strategic vision can free up staff to concentrate on providing a higher quality service for our customers.’ Te council had clear objectives for the transformation of its parking
services division: l Reduce costs of
administration per ticket l Automate appropriate
processes l Develop a web-based mobile service to help improve customer interactions Parking consultancy Civica
has provided technology for the changes. Silverio praised the company’s ability to meet the demands of the council. ‘Civica was the
In control… Harrow Borough Council is taking efficiency measures
only technology provider that offered electronic document management (EDM) software with document images and processing, with the added ability to seamlessly integrate with, for example, our customer relationship management system (CRM). ‘We wanted to gain value
from our parking system, so the option to migrate to the Civica CE system, with its integrated workflow technology, meant we could more quickly automate the way we worked as well as integrate the technology with other council systems without the headache of setting up a new workflow as well as EDM. Te cost saving benefit of this approach was also attractive.’ Staff training under the
new system is relatively straightforward because it is a Windows-based system, which most people are familiar with. Tis also helps when recruiting temporary workers. ‘We have already found
that we can replace expensive agency staff with students with no parking experience and have them fully trained in three to four months, saving time and costs,’ explained Silverio. Te new parking management system provides a ‘traffic light’ system, which is a quick, visual check of priority- ordered jobs. Once jobs
are scanned, managers can quickly see on a day- to-day basis
what needs completing on a given day, offering them better resource and task planning. Tey can also run immediate reports showing what each employee has completed for a given period, and the time taken against pre-set time targets for each category, showing immediately if an employee has been productive. Tere is also an option for
staff to work from home. Te web-based password-protected interface means any member of staff can securely access the system from home computers. Any information collected
on-street by CEOs is entered into GPS and GPRS-enabled handhelds and uploaded straight into the system in real-time. In the future this open process will be extended to citizens, who will then be able to see the details of their penalty notice online as soon as it is entered in the system. Tey can also trace the process of payments or appeals. Te use of GPS-enabled handhelds also means that management can see where any CEOs are at any time, important for lone worker safety and time-management. Te Civica database
may also be used for wider concessionary travel purposes, for example blue badges, in the future to help cut down on the amount of fraud relating to these permits. Fern Silverio concluded: ‘We
see the partnership, together with the innovative technology, as an opportunity to provide further efficiency savings, but also potentially additional revenue streams in the form of a shared service model for other councils.’
www.britishparking.co.uk
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