Celebrating Sector Achievements: Cheltenham Borough Council's Licensing Team

Cheltenham Borough Council’s Licensing Team has led on several innovative and national first initiatives. In 2018, the council digitised all of its taxi and alcohol licensing application processes, achieving a 100 per cent channel shift.

The legacy manual processes were time and resource intensive, costing £40,565 per annum. In 2017, the council was one of 23 projects selected nationally to receive LGA funding to innovate and improve digital service. The council match funded the £15,000 awarded and invested this in the online forms and underlying technologies to enable the channel shift in its licensing functions.

The solution allows customers to apply and renew licences anywhere at any time. The 100 per cent channel shift for taxi and private hire licence application and alcohol licensing applications has resulted in overall savings of £93,000, including:

• legacy process savings of £40,000

• payment processing savings of £6,000

• paperwork (printing/postage/stationery) savings of £15,000

The shift has also resulted in improved performance, with end-to-end processing times improved by as much as 71 per cent, a resource saving of 156 hours annually and improved customer satisfaction rating and feedback.

The experience and learning of the council has been widely shared across the local government licensing sector, including site visits by more than 20 different local authorities.

One crucial element of the project was engagement. The council invested time and resource to ensure it was able to support officers and customers through training, 1-2-1 sessions and stakeholder engagement groups.

The council had set a date for 100 per cent channel shift for taxi and private hire licensing of 1 March 2018. It was critical that all officers were fully trained and able to mitigate any potential service disruption and were ready to deal with customer queries. The officer and customer engagement work meant the transition from an exclusive paper-based system to a 100 per cent online system was successful with very minor issues.

This project is not the only success of Cheltenham's licensing team. The management of the town's evening and night-time economy (ENTE) falls within its remit. In 2016, Cheltenham’s ENTE achieved Purple Flag status, recognising that the town’s ENTE is safe, well managed and has a diverse offer. The town has retained this status since and in 2018 was peer-nominated for a national award in recognition of its ENTE. Cheltenham was announced as the winner of the ‘Best in Appeal’ national award for 2019.

Additionally, Cheltenham Borough Council became the first local authority in the UK to adopt a Public Spaces Protection Order specifically addressing issues around ticket touts at horse racing events and has also become an accredited provider of training for personal licence permit holders for the sale/supply of alcohol. The council also offers safeguarding training to taxi drivers. The launch of the accredited training services has reaped the rewards of additional income streams.

“It is fantastic to receive independent recognition from iESE for the innovative work of our dedicated licensing team. Cheltenham Borough Council is increasingly being acknowledged as a leading local authority for its service transformation and commercialisation work,” said Mike Redman, Director of Environment at Cheltenham Borough Council. “We are especially proud to have been awarded the iESE Certificate of Excellence for the hard work and commitment which is delivering better and more efficient services and outcomes for our licensing customers.”

To find out more about iESE's Certificate of Excellence, please go to www.iese.org.uk/certificate-excellence