Herefordshire goes live on joined up environment and regeneration system

Herefordshire’s ground-breaking public services partnership has ‘gone live’ on the integration of systems across all of its environment and regeneration services – one of the largest programmes of its kind. It means that services ranging from community protection to planning can readily and securely share information and knowledge to deliver services seamlessly to local people.

Herefordshire Council and NHS Herefordshire were the first local authorities and primary care trusts to create a single management team and integrate services. Now its Herefordshire Connects transformation programme has delivered a new Integrated Environment and Regeneration System (IERS) with software provider Civica. It is the largest and most significant project ever undertaken by Civica in 20 years and in any of its 220 public sector customers in the UK.

IERS has replaced outdated environment and regeneration systems with a single, more efficient system to improve the operation, managing and monitoring of a wide range of environment and regeneration services. This is streamlining the delivery of waste management, planning, environmental health, trading standards, licensing, building controls, conservation and housing, among other services, for the benefit and protection of local residents, consumers, businesses and the environment.

The next step is to integrate the IERS system with Herefordshire’s customer relationship management (CRM) system, which itself was significantly updated earlier this year to help customer services staff accurately log, handle and resolve the public’s telephone calls or emails quickly.

“Herefordshire is driving through significant change across a number of public sector organisations, including the sharing of services to make efficiencies so that we can safeguard frontline services”, said Annie Faulder, interim deputy chief executive for Herefordshire Council and NHS Herefordshire.

“But our vision is to dramatically improve services too, and achieve a much better experience of those services for the people who receive them.

“We are securing all customer information in one central database, so that local people need only tell us once about a problem that concerns them. This will enable public service teams to work together in partnership more effectively in tackling specific problems. The new way of working will cut red tape, paperwork and time spent on administration to help us to use resources more effectively – it will make us easier to deal with, and more responsive to local needs”.

Managers across the primary care trust and the council have been getting their first taste of the new Performance Management and Risk (PMR) system – another in the suite of Herefordshire Connects transformation projects. Its aim is to help build an integrated performance management culture across the organisations.

Herefordshire's new social care case management system was delivered by the Herefordshire Connects programme as planned in November last year and is now being used by almost 400 social care professionals to underpin their daily work.  The new system provides access to up-to-date and comprehensive information, helping them to make good decisions in the best interests of service users.
Herefordshire Connects, working with Herefordshire Council’s strategic advisor Deloitte, aims to improve performance and services, provide enhanced support for staff, and is expected to save £1.2 million in the current and next financial year, with an ongoing £2 million saving a year after that.