Member Article

Liberata wins £9.5m contract extension with London Borough of Hounslow

Liberata has won a contract extension from the London Borough of Hounslow to continue to deliver revenue collection and benefit assessment services.

As part of a £9.5million deal, the business process innovation company will oversee the digital transformation of these services, as Hounslow looks to enable greater citizen self-service and automate its existing business processes.

This shift towards digital services is expected to deliver significant cost savings to the Borough over the next 30 months.

Hounslow is the 10th largest borough in London and is home to more than 295,000 residents.

In order to help Hounslow deliver services to citizens more efficiently and cost-effectively, Liberata will be providing business processes automation and change management services.

For example, the manual and resource-intensive task of assessing benefit claims will now be automated, while citizens will be given online self-service options to pay tax bills and amend personal details.

Councillor Theo Dennison, cabinet member for finance and citizen engagement, said: “The extension of the contract will streamline administrative services so we can save money for council taxpayers and free up funds for our priorities such as schools and care for older people.”

The London Borough of Hounslow has been working with Liberata since 2005. Utilising Liberata’s expertise and shared service model Hounslow has saved circa £22m to date by developing multi-skilled employee teams and improving debt profiling.

The Borough now achieves tax collection rates of 97.8%, the upper quartile percentage rate for London. In addition, Liberata was able to recover a further £2m in income from the collection of historic arrears. These benefits have ultimately enabled Hounslow to pass more savings on to its citizens; it is one of only three local authorities in the country to maintain its council tax rate since 2006.

“We are really pleased to be extending our partnership with the London Borough of Hounslow, by helping it on its digital transformation journey,” said Vijay Chandiramani, COO of Local Government Business Process Services at Liberata. “Local authorities continue to face the challenge of delivering greater efficiencies in response to tightening budgets, meaning service innovation is key. Our work with Hounslow is a great example of how we are using the know how we have collected from working in the revenue collection and benefits space to deliver a low risk, high value service.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .