Delivering building control excellence for the people and place of Luton

The issue

When Luton Borough Council found themselves short of building control managers along with a large influx of building control applications, they needed some immediate but flexible support to help clear the backlog and also temporarily  manage the council’s current team.

Our approach

Working alongside the council’s existing building control team, our pool of building control experts was able to provide short term, interim team management capacity support – and was also on hand  to help the department improve service efficiencies by reviewing the structure, systems and processes.

We reviewed and analysed the council’s current building control procedures and practices and were able to identify –and implement – tried and tested solutions, instantly providing service improvements and efficiencies.

These improvements included:

• improvements to the building control IT system to enable meaningful and accurate management reports
• implementing an open approach to accepting applications and interaction with public during the entire working day
• increasing the use of mobile technology for smarter and agile working
• using Capita’s plan checking hub to help support and reduce the checking of application backlogs
• implementing stronger performance management tools to help monitor and control output standards and help surveyors to manage their workloads
• reviewing and updating the building control policy to help strengthen the fundamentals of the function as well as writing an enforcement policy to set out new enforcement action procedures
• developing a dangerous structures policy and training the council’s staff to deliver this specialised service.

The outcome

• Before introducing Capita’s resilience service, the council had a nine month application checking backlog and 0% of building control plans were checked within 10 working days. We managed to reduce the amount of time residents had to wait to hear back on their applications, with 65% now been processed within ten days of making the claim.
• By adding extra capacity, Luton Borough Council is able to provide a high level of service to its customers. It can provide access to surveyors and technical staff from 8.30am to 5.00pm and customer emails are now answered within 48 hours.
• The council is now using online submission portals and online payment procedures which generates service and resourcing efficiencies.
•  A new energy was created among the council’s building control team and morale was restored.
• The council was extremely happy with the service provided by Capita and has extended the contract by a further six months.
• We are now introducing a marketing campaign to help the council to win more work and increase its market share.