East Renfrewshire Council has cut the paperwork used to
administer its education benefits by 66% after enabling parents to
apply online for school meals and clothing grants.
The Scottish local authority has reduced the number of interview
letters sent to parents each year from more than 1,500 to just
495.
Parents are now able to apply for benefits online and discover
whether they are entitled to those benefits at the same time.
East Renfrewshire’s IT department developed the online benefits
engine on its council-wide revenues and benefits system.
The service was ready for transformation after council leaders
transferred it from the community resources department to the
corporate customer services department.
By building the portal on the support services department’s main
system, the council was able to automatically find much of the
documentary evidence needed before education benefits can be
awarded.
The council already held the two main proofs of benefit –
council tax rebate and housing benefit – on its revenues and
benefits system.
Parents applying for education benefits online who are already
receiving council tax rebates or housing benefits can now have
their claims processed automatically.
The council has removed further bureaucracy by linking the
revenues and benefits system to the electronic school roll. Schools
no longer have to manually confirm the attendance of applicants for
free school meals.
When education benefits were still administered by the community
resources department, a separate system was used to capture
parents’ applications.
The legacy application had fallen out of support, and also
lacked an interface with the revenues and benefits system, so
education benefits applications were manually entered twice.