Government crest UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)

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Laying the foundations for better local public services

‘Tell us once’ move in process

Contents:

  1. Project outputs
  2. Project timeline
  3. Feedback

This discovery project explored the best way of allowing people moving into a council’s jurisdiction to contact the council just once to set up all their services – including council tax, bin collections, and benefits.

The current ‘move-in’ process requires residents to contact the council and tell their story multiple times. This leads to delays and hardship in some cases, for example, getting into arrears with council tax payments. This service is complex, time-consuming and costly for the resident and the council due to having to process multiple services for one individual. The discovery aimed to clarify this problem, the impact and the potential to develop a common digital approach to benefit residents and local authorities.

Project outputs

All Local Digital Fund discovery projects were asked to provide the following information at completion:

  • User research report
  • Benefits case
  • Recommendations for next steps

Downloads

Alternative ways to view the outputs:

Contact [email protected] if you are having problems accessing the outputs.

Project details

Phase: Discovery

Funding granted: £77,000

Duration: December 2018 – April 2019

Partners: Sunderland City Council, North East Lincolnshire Council, Kirklees Borough Council, Watford Borough Council, Newcastle City Council

Organisations: Sunderland City Council, North East Lincolnshire Council, Kirklees Borough Council, Watford Borough Council, Newcastle City Council

Services: Central and other services,

Housing

Project links

Project timeline

December 2018 - discovery

‘Tell us once move in process’ discovery receives £77,000 from the Local Digital Fund.

April 2019 - discovery

‘Tell us once ‘move-in’ process’ discovery delivers project outputs which are published on the Local Digital website.

Feedback

Each project was assessed using these lenses by the Local Digital Collaboration Unit. We have provided feedback directly to the project teams and this is a summary of what we shared with them.

It aims to be constructive for both the project team and any other organisation wishing to learn about the project or make use of the work done.

  • The project team recruited users via partner local authorities only, which resulted in a small number of research participants. The team should consider making use of alternative recruiting methods in order to expand this user research and strengthen the recommendations made.
  • The project team produced personas and should consider centring these personas around user needs, behaviours and digital literacy. In addition, decoupling age and disability would give confidence that these are based on user needs and not business requirements.
  • The project reviewed other government sites (GOV.UK and Local Government Association) to find out what guidance they offered to users about council services that need to be contacted when moving home. The team should consider extending this research to other councils and other organisations to validate their findings about the advice available to citizens.
  • The project considers a longer term vision for this work as well as smaller scale immediate actions. The project team should consider further engagement with other councils or similar projects in order to benchmark and support the economic case that is presented.