Leeds City Council is planning to automate processes within its council tax operation through the deployment of the Govtech digital forms system during the autumn.
It has agreed a two-year deal with the company, with options to extend for two more, under G-Cloud with an estimated value of £685,000 for the full term.
The council plans to integrate the platform with its Capita revenues and benefits system and to go live with the operation by the end of October.
Andrew Melvin, managing director of Govtech, said it will use the technology to automate processes that have to be handled manually with the existing system.
“They will keep using their Capita system and deploy a suite of web forms hosted by Govtech, which their citizens, landlords and businesses will use to request services and report changes. The data from the forms will come through our systems which will load it into their core system and automate the processing.”
He said this can extend to complex processes such as making adjustments in line with the rules for a couple splitting up, due to the extensive variations in business rules programmed into the system.
Supporting optimisation
The company will also provide service optimisation reviews for the council as part of the service.
Melvin said the council has indicated the move will free up 14 members of staff for other tasks.
It is also considering whether to extend the use of the system to non-domestic rates and benefits.
Mark Amson, Leeds’ head of revenues, commented: “After an extremely thorough evaluation, we have chosen Govtech to support the delivery of the end to end automation of council tax transactions.
“End to end automation will improve the customer experience when accessing council tax services online, improve response times and lead to quicker response rates. The council tax service will be able to focus on more complex cases and be able to bill quicker leading to improvements for collections.”
