Client Problem
● In early 2021 Sheffield City Council approached Marston Holdings after they had found themselves sinking under a mountain of Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) correspondence. The parking team were issuing a far greater number of PCN’s than their existing staff could manage on a day-to-day basis, resulting in a steadily increasing backlog of correspondence.
● In August 2020 the parking team had a backlog of almost 3000 challenges which by March 2021 had almost doubled to just under 6000 and was set to continue increasing, so the team reached out to us for resilience support to aid in reducing the backlog.
The Solution
● In April 2021 Marston Holding’s Shared Service Centre in Oldham began to assist the Sheffield City team to clear the backlog. By shifting the challenges backlog to Marston, the Sheffield team were able to focus on cases at other stages, which in turn reduced the total workload.
● By the beginning of November 2021, after six months of dedicated work, the backlog of correspondence experienced by Sheffield City Council had been reduced to close to zero.
Benefits
● Quick, effective and professionally handled reduction in backlog.
● Ability to benchmark internal operation versus best in class outsourced model.
● Adoption of new processes to drive efficiency into future.
Key to success
Key to the success of this operation was the ability of the Oldham Shared Service Centre Team to operate at pace with high output rates, whilst at the same time maintaining good quality of responses, getting their collective heads round the myriad of different permit types and rules, and being prepared to ask good queries on cases where relevant.