Sefton Council’s Customer Centric Services division covers all aspects of Customer Services Citizen Transactions and associated support services. These include the collection of Council Tax, Business Rates and other Revenues. Also included are the assessment of Housing Benefits, Council Tax Reductions and other financial awards. Customer Services, include a telephone Contact Centre and One Stop Shops dealing with customer enquiries and interactions, on behalf of a wide range of Council services, via telephone, email, social media and face-to-face.
The division is committed to providing a high-quality of service and to measure our success in achieving this goal, we are publishing a summary of each team’s performance here. This will be updated on a quarterly basis:
- Work volumes - the team has continued to maintain the excellent work position
- Work volumes - As of 31st December 2025, there were 13,347 documents outstanding, compared to over 13,904 documents at the same point in 2024 and 35,000 documents in 2023, Changes are being processed within two weeks compared to up to 16 weeks at the same time last year.
- My account / paperless billing- the team now has 29,068 residents registered for a My Account. Customers are using the online portal to see how much they need to pay in Council Tax and when payments are due. They are also using My Account to apply for discounts and set up Direct Debits and reporting any changes online with almost 60% of changes automated. Further improvements have recently been made to the portal to improve security and the look and feel for customers managing their Council tax account online.
- Collected over £177.6.4 million in 2025/26.
- Several Corporate Complaints escalated to the Local and Social Care Ombudsman found no fault with the Council’s handling of the cases.
- Work volumes - the team has continued to maintain and improve its excellent position with workloads. As at 24th December 2025, there were 372 documents outstanding, compared to 775 documents at the same point in 2024 and 912 documents in 2023. Changes are being processed within 24 hours of being received.
- My account / paperless billing- the team now has over 1,125 businesses registered for a My Account. Businesses are using the online portal to see how much they need to pay in Business Rates and when payments are due. They are also using My Account to notify of changes, set up Direct Debits and update personal/contact details online with 89.18% of actions being automated.
- Phone calls- Between the 1st October and 24th December 2025, the team received 622 phone calls, compared to 682 calls for the same period last year. The decrease is largely due to a commitment to channel shift, improved Business Rates webpages and a reflection on how up to date the Business Rates team are with their work. Furthermore 95.6% of these calls were answered successfully.
- Analyse Local RV finder – has identified approximately £589k in additional revenue.
- Have now reviewed 50% of all 8,000 properties on the Business Rates database to ensure that the information held is accurate and up to date.
- Collected over £59.3 million Business Rates for 2025/26 as well as significant sums for previous years arrears.
- Accounts Receivable- 578 Customers now signed up to Direct Debit for Sundry Debt and £385k collected this quarter
- Accounts Receivable- £17 million in payments received
- Accounts Payable-there was 70k recovered from the duplicate payment system
- Accounts Payable- Supplier Early payment scheme, £30k raised in rebates
- Accounts Payable- 71 million paid to suppliers
- Accounts Payable-Fiscal Recovery project identified £500k additional revenue
- Accounts Payable & Receivable- 1857 phone calls dealt with in quarter
|
Assessments Performance QTR 3 (October to December 2025/26) |
||
|
Tasks |
Total Assessments Completed/ Awarded |
Average Time Taken |
|
Housing Benefit New Claims |
309 |
13.52 days |
|
Council Tax Reduction New Claims |
1,049 |
35.63 days |
|
Discretionary Housing Payments |
492 |
28 days |
|
Emergency Limited Assistance Scheme |
1,542 |
2 days |
|
Open Access Household Support Fund |
3,400 |
14 days |
Between 1st Oct – 31st Dec 2025, 87% of all incoming calls were answered and 89% of prioritised calls were answered.
Between 1st Oct – 31st Dec 2025, 66% of all calls answered waited less than 5 minutes. However, during our busiest times of the day 12.00 pm and 2.00 pm, this reduced to 61% of all calls waited less than 5 minutes.
Between 1st Oct – 31st Dec 2025, the average waiting time to see a CSA, across our two One Stop Shop sites, was 9 minutes.
Between 1st Oct – 31st Dec 2025, Customer Services received 4 stage 1 complaints and 1 compliment. All of these, 100%, were answered within 15 days. We received 0 stage 2 complaints.
In our most recent Customer Service User Experience Survey, in November 2025:
- a very high number of respondents, at both sites, said that their query was fully resolved during their visit (over 97% at both sites)
- 100% of respondents were either ‘Very Satisfied’ or ‘Fairly Satisfied’ with their interaction with a Customer Services Advisor
- over 99% of respondents in Bootle, and 95% in Southport, were ‘Very Satisfied’ or ‘Fairly Satisfied’ with the whole experience of interacting with Sefton Council via Customer Services during their visit
- 100% of all respondents said they did feel they had been treated fairly
Feedback received from our customers during our Customer Service User Experience Surveys, consistently highlights the difficulties some of our customers experience in trying to access Sefton’s online services.
Throughout the period 1st Oct – 31st Dec 2025, we’ve continued to implement further improvements to our new Taxi Licensing portal and to provide digital assistance to all customers who genuinely require it.