North Tyneside Council invests in local residents

North Tyneside Council has announced it is to implement government software supplier Lagan’s solution as part of its commitment to ensuring a consistently high level of service to its 198,000 citizens.

Lagan Enterprise Case Management will be deployed throughout the council’s 15 service centres and North Tyneside’s new corporate headquarters. In an innovative move, North Tyneside Council is incorporating a number of services centres within some of its local libraries, enabling residents to report housing repair requirements, make rent payments, and deal with revenues & benefits and council tax payments or enquiries at the same time as renewing their library books.

Paul Hanson, Strategic Director of Community Services with North Tyneside Council, explains that the decision to work with Lagan was the result a full procurement process from which Lagan’s Enterprise Case Management solution emerged as the best fit for the council’s needs: “Having surveyed our customers about what they want from the council, and how they want to interact with us, we were keen that people in the community should see immediate benefits as a result of the implementation. The Lagan system is simple to deploy and configure and because it is so user-friendly, customer-facing staff will not require extensive training. We are confident that our customers will notice a big difference in the level and quality of service they receive from day one.’’

The new customer contact software will be combined with significant ongoing investment in buildings in North Tyneside, ensuring 90% of customers will be one mile or less (and no one more than two miles) from a welcoming and efficiently operating customer service centre. Lagan Enterprise Case Management software will provide 250 front-line staff with a holistic view of the customer, ensuring a rapid response to a range of queries from a single point and via multiple access channels. As a result, North Tyneside Council will be on track to meet the Government’s NI 14 ‘avoidable contact’ requirements against which all local authorities will be measured from April 2009.

Martin Stocker of Lagan says, ‘’We are delighted that North Tyneside has selected Lagan Enterprise Case Management to support the council in working more closely with their customers and improving the service they deliver. Our task now is to ensure a smooth and speedy implementation to deliver measurable improvements for the council and its communities.’’

North Tyneside Council is spearheading an economic resurgence in the area, and joins a number of local authorities in the North East - including Gateshead Council, Newcastle City Council, Darlington Council and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council - to have adopted the Lagan solution.