Background
North East Lincolnshire Council (NELC) provides a full range of local government services including Council Tax billing, libraries, social services, processing planning applications, waste collection and disposal, and it is a local education authority. Established in April 1996 following the abolition of Humberside County Council, NELC is the local authority of North East Lincolnshire. It is a unitary authority, having the powers of a non-metropolitan county and district council combined.
The Problem
The main challenge NELC faced through the Household Support Fund was figuring out how to get substantial funds out into the community quickly and easily. Prior to signing up with allpay, NELC used bank transfers, which were sometimes time consuming and very administratively heavy. Using the allpay process allowed bulk provision of funds to residents in need.
The Solution
NELC now uses allpay’s Payout and Payout NOW! products, as well as Over the Counter Bill Payments for certain services. The Payout product is an enhancement of the allpay cash offering, allowing you to deliver cash payments to your customers using barcode technology to their mobile phone or email address. Payout NOW! is a premium service for immediate Cash disbursement requests. With all the same benefits as Payout, this service is able to promptly distribute vouchers in real-time via the chosen method.
he authority signed up to the Payout and Payout NOW! products to use with the issue of Household Support Fund monies to residents, to support Ukrainian refugees needing access to emergency cash and to issue the £150 Council Tax Energy Rebate support to households.
Following enquiries on the scheme, NELC were linked up with allpay’s implementation team who guided them through the set-up process. With the allpay team supporting any questions from the NELC, the set up took a couple of weeks as expected. Once NELC were using the scheme they had regular check ins with the implementation team to make sure all was running smoothly
The Results
Through using the Payout scheme, NELC has supported over 15,000 residents in their area with funds which they would have otherwise struggled to provide at a time of financial challenge. They have used the Payout solution to put around £2m into North East Lincolnshire economy in an efficient way, and feedback from customers was that cashing in the vouchers at any Post Office location was quick and easy.
Set up of the process, from initial enquiry, implementation internally then to the issue of our first payment took around 4 weeks. So far, they have issued in excess of 15,000 payment vouchers to residents totalling approximately £2m. They continue to use the scheme weekly and intend to issue a further 5,000 vouchers over the next couple of weeks for another £0.5m to their older residents in the borough.
The scheme has been so successful at North East Lincolnshire they have also signed up North Lincolnshire, whose Local Taxation and Benefits Team are part of a shared service delivery model and using this method of issuing funds into the community is now part of their operating model for the issue of grant funding into the community.
Cindy Laherty – Strategic Lead Revenues and Benefits said:
“Set up of the scheme was easy, our allpay project team were incredibly supportive to get the process up and running. Finalising the letter templates and making speedy changes were no trouble at all. Right from our first enquiries on whether the process was the right one for us, allpay could not have been more helpful. When we added the Payout NOW! option, again set up was easy and provided a vehicle for us to immediately offer support to our new residents. Once set up, transferring funds and loading files onto the Post Office portal was easy with the vouchers being out in the community in a matter of days. With the next tranche of Household Support Funding on the horizon, using the Payout and Payout NOW! process is a quick and easy option for distributing funds to those most in need in our community. It provides an administratively light, cost-effective option to allow us to target support where and when it is required.”
