THE RIGHT PREPARATION

We’ve worked with the Exchequer team at Southwark since 2011. They use our revenues and benefits, housing and document management systems. They were also early adopters of a cloud-first approach. As a result, they could shift to homeworking and design new community support schemes from the moment lockdown started.

Southwark’s Director of Exchequer, Dominic Cain, explains:

“In Revenues and Benefits, we’ve used the software in the cloud since 2016. Having high-functioning and resilient services that could already be used from home made a vast difference to the speed of our response.”

SUPPORTING COMMUNITIES

Very quickly, the team needed to roll out new national grants. They also needed to deliver locally-tailored support and manage a huge increase in demand.

This work included:

• Administering the new Business Grant process
• Delivering extra hardship support through the Council Tax system
• Dealing with a 450% rise in Council Tax Reduction claims
• Enhancing the existing local welfare support scheme

The software and cloud infrastructure were already well-embedded. So staff were able to sustain high levels of productivity in difficult circumstances. The systems ran quickly and with minimal downtime. Updates could also be rolled out overnight to meet new legislation. And the council could easily scale up if needed.

Automation also made a huge difference, like developing a new process for claims and changes in circumstances for the Council Tax Reduction scheme just before lockdown. Without it, it would have been difficult to administer such a huge increase in applications.

Strategic partnership

As well as the software and cloud services, Dominic believes the nature of the partnership itself made the difference:

“We’ve worked with NEC for many years. Not only do they respond to our needs, they’ll also engage with us on future challenges. As well as delivering really resilient services, it’s their willingness to listen that’s been the key to building trust. There will be new challenges round the corner, and I have complete faith that this partnership will help us to meet them.”