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RESOLVED:
 
To agree to appoint
Bidders 2, 3, 4 and 5 in Exempt Appendix 2 for the collection of
unpaid Council Tax and Business Rates. This will be a two year contract with the option to extend by a
further two years on a one year plus one year basis.
 
 
Reason(s) For
Decision
 
1. 
The business case sets out the structure of the framework with four
enforcement agents, with three being primary and one being a
returns firm.
2. 
Cases will be split equally between the three primary appointments,
with the returns firm receiving cases that the primary firms have
been unsuccessful in collecting.
3. 
Collection levels at compliance and enforcement stage, levels and
types of complaints are monitored monthly and reviewed with firms
on a quarterly basis. The collection levels are shared to ensure
the highest levels are achieved whilst maintaining ethical
collection.
4. 
KPI’s will be measured and baselines set as due to the impact
of the cyber attack, work has not been
passed to Enforcement Agents for 2 years, hence we need to
establish a baseline from which we will measure improvements and
delivery to contract commitments.
 
Alternative Options
(Considered and Rejected)
 
1.1  Insourcing of the
service was considered but rejected at this stage for the reasons
below: 
· 
Time constraints on building a new service from scratch which would
require
· 
Creation and resourcing of a contact centre to handle calls.
· 
Procurement and set up of the appropriate IT infrastructure.
· 
Recruitment of Enforcement Agents and the ability to pay an
appropriate salary - Enforcement Agents are leaving the industry at
a rate exceeding those joining. They are paid on a basic salary and
commission basis making those that are good at their jobs highly
paid. This would create recruitment challenges.
· 
We would only have work that is generated from our Council Tax and
Business Rates meaning it would be a small amount of work with
limits on earning potential for Agents. Private firms work for
multiple bodies and would have a much larger work portfolio across
London and England & Wales so benefit from those economies of
scale.
· 
Loss of added Value from providers.
 
1.2  Insourcing and potential
cross working with any other appropriate Local Authorities who have
insourced their Enforcement work will be reviewed in the first two
years of the contract. This work will involve
· 
Establishing costs and time scales for the required
infrastructure.
· 
Discussion with appropriate Local Authorities who have insourced as
to possible shared services, establish what benefits they have
achieved, what negative impacts have occurred, how have they been
managed.
· 
The work to look at insourcing will take place in the first year of
the contract so a decision can then be made on next steps.