East Riding of Yorkshire Council

Since 2002, East Riding of Yorkshire Council has consistently been at the forefront when it comes to offering citizens an increased choice of payment channel. By using Capita payment solutions, the Authority has identified tangible year-on-year efficiency savings.

The background

East Riding of Yorkshire Council has a population of 330,000 and covers an area of 930 square miles, and although largely rural, it includes the towns of Beverley, Bridlington and Goole. This unitary authority has over 146,000 domestic properties, around 11,000 of which are council owned and is home to 9,948 businesses. The Council employs over 14,000 people and has a gross annual expenditure of £500 million.

The challenge

For John Buttle, Billing and Collections Manager at the Council, replacing the existing cash receipting system became a priority in 2002. He commented, “The product had reached the end of its useful life, giving us an opportunity to review current payment facilities. Apart from counter services, we also offered internet payments through Girobank - a process that took up to four days – as well as telephone payments, but both these methods depended heavily upon manual processing”.

The solution

In late 2002, the Council embarked upon a programme of updating the existing over-the-counter payment solution (replacing an earlier Capita product) and extending citizen choice via self-service payment channels such as internet and touch-tone telephone.

The benefits

It is widely accepted within the Local Authority sector that the cost of taking self-service payments via methods such as internet or touch-tone, or even via a call handled by a member of staff, is considerably less than taking a face-to-face payment over the counter on an authority’s site. It is estimated that the cost to the Council of a self-service payment is around a sixth of the cost of taking that same payment in a cash office.

The next steps

As well as using Capita’s Managed Service to process card payments made by both Internet and Touch Tone, the Council also accepts card payments within both Counter Receipting and Paye.net, although in these instances it currently uses an on-site APACS solution.