One of the worst benefit services ever inspected – that was the bleak message coming from the Benefits Fraud Inspectorate about Swindon Borough Council’s outsourced Revenues and Benefits Service when they first approached Public Sector Consultants to help them revive their flagging service. Consultant, Pete Coles was appointed as their Benefits Service Improvement Manager in March 2004, to help them to respond to the criticism.
Pete said “There was a considerable task facing us. Not one element of the Service escaped criticism from the BFI, it lacked direction and it was the customer that was suffering. Processing of claims was painfully slow, error rates unacceptably high and the potential for fraud huge. We needed to go back to basics and build a robust, responsive service from scratch whilst continuing to try to serve the public.”
Since the recovery plan would only be successful if additional resources were brought in, Pete was appointed as Interim Head of Service and was joined from Public Sector Consultants by Rick Steels who replaced him as Service Improvement Manager, Andy Illingworth and Phil Clarke, who both worked as project managers to implement the BFI recommendations and monitor performance.
Mike O’Donnell, former Director of Finance at Swindon said “Pete Coles and his team brought a wealth of expertise to the problem at a time when the Council needed to rapidly address the issues raised by the BFI and others.” To help the Council we designed a strategic management framework and this is illustrated below:
“Public Sector Consutlants’ work has helped to put the foundations in place to enable the Council and its contractor to continue to improve its Revenues & Benefits Service” said Mike. We are continuing to support Swindon and the Service scored a 3 (Good) in the latest self assessment. Now, new claims are being processed within 25 days and the potential for fraud is much reduced.
