Uttlesford District Council enhances efficiency and boosts morale with Idox Insights – LGA Advertorial

Effective resource management is one of the biggest challenges facing councils. Recruiting and retaining professional expertise is vital to meet the needs of local communities but today at least eight out of 10 planning departments are short of staff. For Uttlesford District Council, in Essex, the need for effective resource management is increased by the sheer weight of work in a district home to both rural villages and London Stansted Airport, as well as major road and rail networks connecting to London and Cambridge.

This combination of idyllic countryside environment with modern infrastructure developments has a significant impact on the planning team. As Councillor John Evans, Portfolio Holder for Planning at Uttlesford District Council, says: “The volume of work our officers need to process is substantial compared with the size of authority we are.”

To increase productivity, efficiency, and collaboration throughout the planning team and provide faster, deeper insight for cabinet members and elected members, Uttlesford turned to Idox Insights, a cloud-based analytics and insight solution created initially for development management departments.

Insight driven Planning

Idox Insights provides Uttlesford with access to analytics and dashboards to gain data-driven

insights. It helps the planning department to keep track of everything from the big picture to the bottom line without relying on specialist technical skills or complex licences.

Significant benefits were achieved within a mere six months after the implementation of Idox Insights.

• Transformed reporting: Reports are now instantly available, saving 20 hours every month on administrative tasks and ensuring all team members have consistent information.
• Improved workload planning: Improved reporting combined with up-to-date analytics has allowed Uttlesford to address previously disparate and uneven workloads between planning officers, improving case sign off time and, crucially, team morale.
• Effective task ownership: Planning officers no longer rely on managers to identify missed case signoffs. With direct visibility into this information, the process is streamlined and delays prevented.
• Better collaboration: An intuitive interface and clear visuals ensure Council staff at all levels can easily access and interpret the data without requiring specialised training. This ensures better information sharing and understanding across teams.
• Confident decision making: Immediate access to trusted information allows workload decision to be made with confidence, leading to a timely and cost-effective approach to the planning process.

Better morale

Dean Hermitage, Strategic Director of Planning at Uttlesford Council, explains: “The biggest pressure facing our planning service is common to all planning services and that is resourcing: attracting and retaining professional staff.”

Using Idox Insights, team leaders now visualise data to assign workloads fairly, as it provides a clear overview of each officer’s caseload and the complexity of each case. This visualisation has inadvertently acted as a coaching tool, facilitating mentoring and training within the team – which has provided a boost to team morale.

As Councillor John Evans confirms in this video: “Idox Insights allows Uttlesford to be more efficient and allocate resource more effectively and provide a faster turnaround.”

He adds: “The key benefits are to enable early identification of potential issues and difficulties that might be faced by the individual officer. Looking independently at who is doing what, when and over which particular period allows us to offer proper support to individual officers.”

Idox is a trusted partner

Uttlesford has been able to achieve this significant shift in performance within just a few months by working closely with a trusted solutions partner who both fully appreciated and could deliver the Council’s needs. Over the past 13 years, Uttlesford has maintained a long, trusted relationship with Idox, during which time they have successfully implemented Uniform Cloud with Enterprise, Total Land Charges, EDRMS, Public Access, and Onsite Mobile Apps.

It was therefore a natural conclusion for the Council to partner with Idox once again, as Ann Howells, Performance and Business Manager at Uttlesford, explains: “Choosing to work with Idox (on Idox Insights) was an easy decision. Their experience was crucial in working with us to establish the foundation and navigate the entire process – it was a no-brainer.”

Once the business case for Idox Insights was confirmed, the Planning portfolio holder played a key role in making a supportive and enthusiastic case to convince the Council cabinet and its members.   After the cabinet voted in favour of the Idox Insights solution, the go-live was a two-month collaborative and smooth process involving weekly meetings between Uttlesford and Idox.

Quantifiable ROI

While it’s still early days for Uttlesford’s Insights journey, the benefits and return on investment are already clear to see.

Dean Hermitage confirms: “Idox Insights helps our officers on a day-to-day basis – managing their workload, looking at their performance, and being able to efficiently plan site visits. It also helps managers review officers’ performance day-to-day and helps me extract data to be able to report upward to our cabinet members and elected members.”

Uttlesford is only scratching the surface of Idox Insights’ potential:

• Other departments have already committed to using the platform for building control, planning enforcement, environmental health, and licensing.
• The Council aspires to make certain analytics publicly accessible to help enhance residents’ understanding of the district’s workload by showcasing the volume of cases handled.
• This transparency could serve as a platform to demonstrate the Council’s significant contributions to the local community.

“Uttlesford are moving ahead in leaps and bounds,” says Ann Howells, “and we can now show everyone that we can lead the way.”

As a local authority, you can also be part of an innovative data-led future: Idox Insights has the capacity to provide major improvements in departments across councils.