The Insolvency Service plans to transform services & enhance its efficiency
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In a contract worth £2.8 million over five years, Northgate will support the Redundancy Payments Service (RPS) in providing citizen-focused services to employees who have been made redundant and whose employers are unable or unwilling to make redundancy payment. This project is a core element of the transformational Claims Handling and Making Payments (CHAMP) project. In the last twelve months, over 165,000 workers made claims to the RPS, and the total amount paid out to redundant workers was over £350 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, Northgate will replace The Insolvency Services' current system for redundancy claim and payment processing, removing the dependency on outmoded technology which requires specialist support. By the end of the project the partnership will have delivered:
• accessible service through on-line, self-service facilities for claimants and insolvency practitioners;
• faster processes and thereby reducing the time taken to process claims.
• joined up working through a single national database, allowing cases and claims to be accessed remotely and encouraging greater flexibility of work for RPS employees, including homeworking;
• improved accuracy of payments using integrated task management and rules based solutions, thereby reducing manual intervention and calculation errors;
• sustainable working through an electronic document management system, reducing the use of space and paper:
• improved detection and prevention of fraud through integration with the HMRC National Insurance Recording System (NIRS) for validation of NI numbers and employment details.
The system will also support the RPS in dealing with solvent claims, in facilitating redundancy payments awarded by Employment Tribunals, and in its debt recovery work.
Graham Horne, Deputy Chief Executive of the Insolvency Service says:
'We are committed to transforming our services to provide excellent customer care and value for money. In these difficult economic times, it is vital that we provide a fast and effective service for people who face redundancy .We look forward to working with Northgate and providing an improved service to our customers.
The Insolvency Service is an Executive Agency of the Department of Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform (BERR). It operates principally in England and Wales under the Enterprise Act 2002, Insolvency Acts 1986 and 2000, the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, the Companies Act 1985 and the Employment Rights Act 1996.
The Redundancy Payments Service (RPS) is responsible for statutory redundancy payments and other statutory guaranteed debts payable from the National Insurance Fund under provisions contained in Parts XI and XII of the Employment Rights Act 1996.
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