Revenues Service ‘Highly Commended’ in national award

Date published: 17 October 2018

Revenues Service ‘Highly Commended’ in national award 

Colchester Borough Council has received a Highly Commended Award in the ‘Revenues Team of the Year (District Authority) category at this year’s Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation (IRRV) Performance Awards.  

The Revenues Team received the award for its work to transform collection services, impressing judges with the enthusiasm of officers working to boost collection levels and improve customer service standards. 

With the rapid growth of Colchester leading to an increasing number of domestic and commercial properties, the Council looked to transform its collection services to effectively manage revenues without the need for additional resources. The solution was to find ways to provide a more intuitive and personalised online experience, so that residents and businesses can pay their bills as quickly and easily as possible. 

During 2017/18, the council invested in technology to ensure customers can self-serve and enable those who need additional support to speak to a specialist at first point of contact by phone or email. 

As part of the changed approach, officers were also given more authority to help customers with their accounts and payments. 

The Revenues team handled 46,000 calls in 2017/18 and completed around 330,000 pieces of work. All of this not only helped the council achieve its best results so far with a nearly 98% council tax and over 99% business rates collection rate, but also a 98% customer service satisfaction rating. 

Cllr David King, Portfolio Holder for Resources, said: “I am really pleased that the Council’s commitment and efforts to transform this service to make it more efficient and customer-friendly has been highly commended at these prestigious national awards. 

“The Team worked incredibly hard to deliver these changes and as a result collection levels and customer satisfaction have improved significantly and it’s great to see this achievement being recognised nationally.”