• OneVu online portal from IEG4 helps to reduce costs for council, providing better user experience and puts #CitizensFirst
  • Remote and rapid two-month implementation during peak of Covid-19
  • Mobile-first design capability
  • >11,000 citizens have signed-up to use online engagement portal during the peak of the pandemic

Over the next two years Newcastle City Council need to make savings of £40 million. This is on top of the £305 million the council has had to save since 2010. This has seen huge cost pressures, including a reduction in its housing benefit admin grant and its council tax reduction grant of about 30% in total. It was crucial that the local authority found savings from wherever possible, in order to keep its services running.

In 2019, following the reduction in housing benefit caseloads due to Universal Credit and an 80% reduction in customers coming into council offices, the local authority closed its face-to-face housing benefit service and its phone lines for housing benefit landlords and business rates customers.

None of the above would have been possible without the ability to bring these services online, using a citizen engagement platform to support the new operating model. To create this new operating model, Newcastle City Council needed a reliable solution to efficiently interact with customers online.

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