Digital Grants Processing

The challenge

Newcastle City Council (NCC) is the local government authority for the city and metropolitan borough of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In a bid to make community grants more accessible to its citizens, NCC needed a digital-first case management solution that could bridge multiple technologies, automate processes and deliver accurate reporting for compliance. The ultimate goal: to deliver a streamlined and transparent end-to-end application process for a range of grants including, more recently, its Clear Air Zone (CAZ) grant.

End-to-end application process

Along with handling telephone calls, the council team had to field numerous unstructured emails. This created more manual work for staff who had to re-key customer data, such as bank account details, and rely on manual spreadsheets to process payments. With limited validation capability, the risk of claim fraud, error and audit failure were high.

Plus, in response to a legal directive, NCC needed to reduce legal levels of traffic-related pollution. Owners of specific vehicles, which didn’t meet national CAZ emissions requirements, needed a simple way to check eligibility and apply for grants. This would include complex applications involving a number of vehicles in a fleet.

They turned to Citizen Hub and Liberty Create, our low-code platform.

“Liberty Create has given us the ability to build new solutions at pace. I’ve never felt so excited and empowered about saying to customers with the local authority that yes, we can do this now!”

Paul Doney

ICT Manager Digital Solutions, Newcastle City Council

The solution

The result

• 6,500 less applications via telephone
• Over 2,100 hours saved
• £3.2m savings in license fees
• £800,000 cashable savings over 5 years
• Savings on postage
• Reduced traffic pollution levels
• Improved customer experience.

“With Liberty Create, we’ve been able to reduce manual processes related to bank payments and reduce the number of staff dealing with telephone calls. Fraud and audit teams absolutely love this product as everything is dealt with in one application and they can easily use data to detect fraud or any errors.”

Paul Doney

ICT Manager Digital Solutions, Newcastle City Council

A continued journey with low-code

Newcastle’s implementation of Citizen Hub demonstrates how smart platform selection and collaborative implementation can revolutionise operations to deliver real change and savings in public service delivery. Focused on integration, efficiency and citizen outcomes, Newcastle redefined customer experience while serving as a model for local government digital transformation.

Utilising an integrated rapid application development solution, the result is a more efficient, responsive and citizen-focused council that has accelerated transformation across the organisation. Newcastle continues to strive for innovation and improvement, keeping citizen outcomes and value for money front and centre.

Hear it for yourself