Islington's Mayor, Cllr Jyoti Vaja and housing benefit managers joined Islington Council's Manchester-based staff this month to mark the first anniversary of its remote 'back office' housing benefit processing team. Islington Council recruited 25 people for its remote team from the local population in Manchester after difficulties recruiting staff in London. It was the first council in the country to set up this kind of a remote benefits service to overcome staff shortages and was commended by local government watchdog, the Audit Commission, for this innovation.
As well as marking the first anniversary, Islington's Mayor, Cllr Vaja, used the visit to share good news with staff. She was delighted to tell them that the Government recently inspected the work done by Islington Council's Housing Benefit Service and declared it an excellent service. It has been awarded four stars - the highest award possible. Stars are awarded on a scale of one to four using a series of performance indicators.
Cllr Marisha Ray, Islington Council's Executive Member for Performance and Community Safety, said: "It took steely determination and vision to bring about this magnificent transformation to our housing benefit service in just three years.
"We now deal with 94 per cent of claims in 14 days, answer over 90 per cent of telephone calls within 20 seconds and the numbers of complaints have plummeted.
"While we are delighted to be rated as excellent, we remain ambitious for further improvements and are excited about our future plans for doing this.
"For example, we are both expanding our Manchester-based service centre, and will also do more 'on the spot' processing, especially in customers' homes. We have already made progress with this. Our officers visit vulnerable people at home and help them to claim benefits -we will be extending this service to people of all ages.
"We are also going to make even more housing benefit transactions possible on our website so even fewer customers will have to visit our offices or telephone us."
By working with a computer company, RB Solutions, the council was able to set up a computer network to make the remote housing benefit office possible. Islington Council's Manchester-based staff use the same computer systems as staff in London and follow the same policies and procedures.
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Page Last Updated: 29 July 2008