What we did
Civiteq had previously delivered a digital strategy for Southampton City Council (SCC) in March 2024.
As part of their wider digital transformation programme, SCC are seeking to make significant cost savings and bring in extra revenue.
They asked us to follow-up our strategy project with two further pieces of work:
- A parking service review – to improve their penalty charge notice (PCN) payment rates.
- Delivery of a service design toolkit – to give the council the tools, resources and methodology to help them carry out their own service reviews as part of their wider transformation programme.
Our parking service review involved:
- Process-mapping workshops
- SWOT workshops (to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
- Data analysis
- A final report
We delivered the service design toolkit as:
- A Microsoft Word document
- And as an interactive HTML site
- A number of supporting templates to be used alongside the toolkit in Word/Visio/Excel and other formats.
Our impact
At the end of the six-week project, our team identified up to £3m of additional annual revenue.
Our final report showed the council:
- The amount of revenue they’re missing out on in their parking service – as well as the future revenue they could be bringing in
- The specific problems in their enforcement of persistent non-payers
- Where the parking violation hotspots are
- Why they’d benefit from a new parking system and the type of functionality they’d need
- How the toolkit for the parking review could act as a framework for other service reviews
Some of the report highlights are shown in the graphic below:
“Our data opened the parking team’s eyes, so they could clearly understand where their problems were. For example, 15% of parking appeals are logged late, wasting 68 person-days a year.”
Alan Taffinder, Consultant, Civiteq
“Civiteq gave us an expert independent view of our service, which has helped us to see the priority areas for us to focus our improvement programme, and importantly highlighted key opportunities for us to generate additional revenue.
The additional support allowed us to accelerate projects which had previously stalled, and by transferring their knowledge to our own staff means we have more capability to be self-sufficient on future programmes.”
Gavin Muncaster, Director of Digital
Our value
Our work delivered a range of real benefits for the council, including:
- Providing an independent, holistic view of their parking service
- Invaluable insight from specialist consultants with ‘lived’ experience inside local government
- Achievable recommendations
- A bespoke service that delivered the most value for the client
“Our recommendations are doable because we’re aware of the constraints of local government.”
Jenny Williams, Senior Consultant, Civiteq