UNISON respond to Call Centre privatisation plan
Email and UNISON report (click here) sent to Cabinet Resources Committee and all other councillors
Dear members of Cabinet Resources Committee
The New Support and Customer Services Organisation: Business Case Update and Shortlist for Dialogue 2 was uploaded onto the Councils website last Tuesday. UNISON have been consulting their members on the content of the report.
I hope that you will have the opportunity to read and digest our response.
I want to draw you attention to section 1 of our report, which highlights what is by far the biggest risk to date the Council are taking.
1. The £600m Revenues and Benefits risk
The Council’s Revenue and Benefits Serviceadministers £230m benefits each year and collects £250m council tax and over £100m business rates. This service has a major role in many people’s lives. It also has a vital role in providing resources to ensure the sustainability of Council services. Thus service continuity is essential.
Three significant risks are not addressed in the Business Case Update:
· The switchover to Universal Credit and the potential impact on those in receipt of benefit in Barnet has been raised as a major change/risk following its initial announcement. However, outsourcing the service immediately before a radical new benefit system comes into effect will mean the contract will be subject to large-scale variations. Changes to contracts provide contractors with opportunities to increase costs. In this situation they could be considerable. Once the business expertise is lost to the contractors, Barnet Council will have little understanding to counter contractor’s claims.
· The impact of potential delays in the government’s Universal Credit timetable (April and October 2013) due to the lack of, or operational problems, in new information technology systems.
· Barnet Council’s planned changes in service delivery and working practices (through a restructure) in Revenues and Benefits. Since the SAP CRM system was procured several years ago, followed by the proposals to fragment complex business processes, there has been a failure to recognise that a single call centre model does not work. It is interesting to note that the Business Case refers to a PI target for the call centre of 80% of calls being handled at the first point of contact compared to current Revenue and Benefits performance of 100% of calls being handled at the first point of contact.
The history of new Information technology systems is littered with failed timetables, cost overruns and poor service delivery, including outsourced revenue and benefits contracts (Whitfield, 2007). The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee recently concluded:
“…the introduction of Universal Credit is dependent upon the successful implementation of new IT, and this requires effective resourcing of the IT back office support services in the Department. Furthermore, the Department is assuming running costs reductions from an optimistic expectation that most customers will communicate online with the Department. Both of these areas are high risk, and any delays are likely to impact on planned cost reductions. There are insufficient contingencies in place and services could be adversely affected if things do not go to plan. Too often this Committee has highlighted examples in other government departments where IT systems or projects have gone off track and emerging problems have gone unchallenged by staff (PAC, 2011).
Revenue and Benefits staff believe that the proposed restructuring of the service, the adoption of a call centre model and the planned adoption of generic job descriptions could result in a significant reduction in the quality of service.
The substantial risks for revenue and benefits are not included in the Risk Assessment Issues in Business Case Update. This should be rectified as a matter of urgency. The Council appears to be complacent, relying on the contractor to solve these problems and reduce risk:“Their scale and expertise also enables them to change and negotiate changes to the technological platform for the service with far greater ease than the council could manage alone”(London Borough of Barnet 2012, page 3).
Best wishes
John Burgess
Branch Secretary.
Barnet UNISON
0208 359 2088
Barnet UNISON “Watch it & Share it”
Defend Our Pensions