Although it may be abolished within three years, county council in the north west has revealed plans for an engagement of up to decade to deliver ‘necessary improvement’ to systems
Lancashire County Council is planning a new multimillion-pound “digital front door” through which to manage its engagements with citizens across a comprehensive range of channels and services.
The organisation – which operates as an upper-tier local authority, sitting directly above 12 district and borough councils – has published a commercial notice outlining its intent to implement a central “platform… designed to streamline and enhance the way residents and businesses interact with services that the authority provides”.
As a county council, those services currently encompass education, transport, highways, libraries, and social services. The dozen districts and boroughs in the region, meanwhile, are responsible for housing, leisure, environmental and waste-collection services, and tax administration.
However, after taking power last year, Labour announced its intent to abolish two-tier structures of local government – currently present in 21 areas of England – and replace existing county, borough and district councils with a smaller collection of single-tier unitary authorities, responsible for all services. This process is due to conclude by April 2028.
Despite the pending reorganisation – and likely abolition – of Lancashire County Council, the authority indicated to PublicTechnology that it is “continuing to operate as normal… [and] our new digital front door is a necessary improvement” to public services across the region.
The contract notice indicates that the tech platform should enable Lancashire to fulfil various “strategic ambitions”, beginning with offering citizens an “easy, seamless experience whether engaging by phone, face to face, social media, AI chat or via a range of resident-facing applications and forms”.
The new digital shopfront should also be “mobile-friendly, [with] easy access to advice, information, and support”, as well as providing users with “opportunities to feedback about their digital journey and the design of our… services”.
The council intends that the system will provide “a consistently effective digital service” via which citizens do not have to provide the same information on multiple occasions and are also offered “real-time access to updates about a service request”.
In addition to online services, the platform should also be equipped with the “ability to capture non-digital interactions where residents have chosen to use non-digital routes”, according to the notice. The authority also wishes to incorporate “an automated telephone payment system which allows users to make payments over the phone or online without needing to speak to an agent”.
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The council’s stipulations also include a system that “promotes an inclusive digital service [where] accessibility is embedded into the fabric of our solution, so that residents with additional needs can engage with us digitally”.
The digital front door must also be able to offer communications in languages other than English, while delivering “effective, timely and empathic” responses to service users.
For citizens seeking information or access to services currently delivered by a lower-tier council or other body, the system should offer “seamless signposting to the wider local government community, without having to understand the difference between county-, district-, or parish-level services”.
The final requirement set out in the procurement document is for “assurance that information we hold is safe and secure”.
Suppliers interested in providing the platform have until 9 May to bid for the contract to do so. Lancashire then expects to appoint its chosen provider to an initial engagement of three and a half years, beginning around the start of September. This deal will offer the possibility of extensions up to a total potential lifespan of 10 years and seven months – and an end date of March 2036.
The council is currently expecting to spend £4.3m, including VAT, with its chosen tech partner.
A spokesperson for Lancashire County Council told PublicTechnology: “We are working with our partners to consider the impacts of local government reorganisation in Lancashire. It’s too early to determine if or how this would impact the county council and the delivery of our services. As such we are continuing to operate as normal, planning for the long-term and ensuring flexibility to accommodate future changes. Our new digital front door is a necessary improvement to the way we support Lancashire residents who use our digital services.”
The authority provides services to almost 1.3 million people in the north west of England, including residents of the cities of Lancaster and Preston – the location of the authority’s County Hall headquarters. Other towns and districts within the council’s purview include Burnley, Chorley, Pendle, and the Ribble Valley.
