Finance & IT News – June 2006
Best Value Performance Indicators
1. Council Tax and Business Rates Collection
|
At 31/05/06 (%) |
At 31/05/05 (%) |
|---|---|---|
Council Tax |
19.5 |
19.8 |
Business Rates |
20.7 |
19.9 |
The slight reduction in performance in Council Tax is due to minor delays in processing changes following a major upgrade to our electronic document management system. The position is being closely monitored.
It is pleasing to see that following the slight dip in NNDR performance last year, the current position shows considerable improvement now out of the system conversion year and recovery processes are back to normal.
2. Processing of Benefit Claims
Processing performance is shown in the table.
Category |
01/04/06 to 30/06/06 |
2006/2007 Target |
|---|---|---|
New claims (days to process) |
43 |
30 |
% of New Claims processed within 14 days |
63% |
80% |
Changes in Circumstances (days to process) |
15 |
10 |
3. Benefit Fraud
The DWP has set a target of 125 sanctions for 2006/07. Current performance shows a comfortable achievement against this target, as shown below:
Sanction Applied |
No. of Cases |
|---|---|
LA Caution |
16 |
Administrative Penalty |
4 |
Successful Prosecutions |
14 |
Total |
34 |
4. Benefit Intervention Work
The total performance figures, which are almost exactly on target, are broken down as follows:
Home Visits |
2,572 |
|---|---|
Postal checks |
948 |
Data matches |
234 |
Total |
3,754 |
5. Payment of Undisputed Invoices
The target set by Government is 100%.
The % of invoices processed within 30 days (or within terms) are:
2004/2005:
- Wigan Council 91.7%
- GM Councils (av) 88.0%
2005/2006:
- Wigan Council 91.3%
- GM Councils (av) 89.6%
Figures for the first quarter of the current year are not available yet, but the returns for April 2006 show the Council a pass rate of 90.7%.
In an effort to improve this statistic, all Chief Officers have been recently canvassed to ensure that their Departments process all payments within terms or the 30 days default period.
Departmental Key Tasks and Service Development
6. Payment of Council Bills
Payments at Post Offices and PayPoint agents continue in line with expectations and completely without problem.
Payments received via the Credit card line show an increase in the number of all transactions of over 10% for the year (up 7% by value) – the growth being in internet and digital payments, whilst staff fielded transactions remain broadly similar.
The value of Internet transactions consistently exceeds £225,000 per month since April and now accounts for over 25% by number (and almost 25% by value) of all credit/debit card transactions.
The 24/7 Automated Telephone Service (launched in December 2003) is now the most popular way of paying by credit/debit card and has taken almost 41% by number of all credit/debit card transactions since April/06 (37% by value).
The figures show the position for the period 1 April 2006 to 31 May 2006.
|
No. (000’s) |
£’m |
|---|---|---|
Post Office |
87.8 |
4.881 |
PayPoint |
18.1 |
0.779 |
Telephone |
7.5 |
0.772 |
Internet |
5.5 |
0.514 |
Automated Telephone |
8.8 |
0.774 |
Customers have been able to pay any council bill by credit/debit card at both Leigh and Wigan cash offices following the upgrade to the cash receipting system (May 2004). Since April/06 almost 1,500 payments have been taken. The agreement with HSBC through Co-op Bank now allows us to accept payment by customers who present the Visa Electron card.
Following decriminalisation of Parking, fines can be paid by credit/debit card using any of the above mentioned facilities as well as at the newly opened office in the Market where 73 transactions have been accepted since April/06. Payment can also be made at Leigh and Wigan cash offices or any Post Office or Paypoint agent.
7. Main Computer Suite
Work is shortly to begin on the replacement of the air conditioning system in the server accommodation of the computer suite. The old system has been in place since the opening of the suite in 1989. At that time the equipment cooled two mainframes and their peripherals, today we need to cool about 160 servers and much more complex communications hardware. The new system will be more energy efficient resulting in lower electricity bills.
8. Photocopiers
As colleagues in the Civic Centre will already know, we have replaced old photocopiers with combined printer/ copier/ scanner equipment. The new equipment is connected to the data network and, as its name suggests, can be used as a fast printer or a scanner or a photocopier. Copies can be emailed to internal recipients directly from the equipment and frequently copied forms can be held on the hard disk to be reproduced at any time without re-scanning the original paper.
9. Junk Mail
All mail arriving from outside the Authority is scanned by our software for viruses and harmful material, but did you know we also scan it for ‘junk mail’? Our ‘Proofpoint’ system scans the content of each message looking for phrases that suggest the message is in fact junk mail. It scores each message and if the score is over a certain threshold, the message is blocked.
Clearly we need to ensure that valid mail is not blocked, so we set the threshold quite high. The system blocks around 7000 messages a week but some still get through. You may have noticed that Outlook does not download any images from the Internet on email messages without you requesting them. This is because sometimes, just requesting an image will tell the junk mail sender that you have read the message and therefore that your email address is ‘live’. And so they send you more mail! The advice is to just delete junk mail if you receive it.