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Case Study: Transforming Colchester Borough Council through behaviour change

Background $/$ Context

Like many local authorities, Colchester Borough Council $($CBC$)$ is implementing an organisation$-$wide transformation

programme to help overcome a funding gap by saving $4$ million between $2014$ and $2017,$ and $2$ million for each of the

next two years. A major element is managing customer demand $-$ both managing demand:

$-$down$,$ e$.$g$.$ reducing in$-$person contact from customers and encouraging online transactions$$ and

$-$up$$ to support commercial activities by encouraging customers to use the Borough$$s income$-$generating services such as

leisure.

Hence, managing demand through behaviour change has become a major tenet of CBC$$s approach to transformation.

Fundamental to CBC$$s approach has been the recognition that to change customers$$ behaviour the organisation must first

develop new behaviours itself.

Objective

Up$-$to $1$million of the $4$million total savings that CBC is seeking to realise between $2014$ and $2017$ will come from

redesigning customer journeys and influencing customer behaviour.

Approach

CBC is seeking to embed behaviour change and demand management techniques as $$business$-$as$-$usual$$ across the

organisation. Their approach has been to evaluate and capture the learning arising from a series of pilot projects employing

behavioural insight techniques to develop a behaviour change $$framework$$ for practitioners which is now being applied

more widely. The learning generated by these pilots has been developed into staff training geared towards cultivating the

capacity of the organisation to employ and apply behavioural insights to service transformation.

Reducing Food Waste

One of these initial projects which piloted the application of behaviour insights things was funded by DEFRA, and

addresses the problem of food waste with the aim of encouraging greater recycling and reducing demand for landfill.

The project tested three different interventions on three groups drawn from a random sample of $7,100$ households. The first

group were encouraged to use an online portal to measure and incentivise recycling. The second group had the message

on their food caddy redesigned and simplified. The third group acted as the control group and had no intervention.

The group of residents with new messaging on their caddy increased their use of the food caddy and reduced the amount of

food placed in their black bags by nearly a quarter of a kilogram per week. In contrast, there was next to no change in those

offered on the online portal or the control group. Applied to all households, this approach can generate a potential saving of

$66,736.$

Encouraging Early Debt Recovery

Another pilot project sought to increase payments from residents claiming Council Tax Support, who had not previously had

to pay council tax and had fallen into arrears in their new payment requirement, Encouraging early recovery reduces the

cost and time of enforcement and the number of people sent to court and receiving bailiff action.

Again, CBC tested three approaches with three different groups of people who were in arrears. One group received a phone

call to encourage payment$$ the second received a text message encouraging payment, while the control group received no

intervention.

The results were clear: where text messages were sent to $277$ people owing council tax on $18$ September, the average

amount paid per head was almost $10$ more than the control group, at $50\mathrm{.}73.$ Two$-$thirds of the group receiving a text

message made a payment, $11\%$ more than in the control group $-$ equating to $2,070$ more in payments from the minor

intervention of sending texts costing $13\mathrm{.}85($a return of $150$ times the cost of the texts$).$ The approach was adopted as

business$-$as$-$usual by the service in April $2015,$ and in the first six month generated $60,643$ in additional payments.

In addition to raising additional revenue, by reducing the number of cases that reach final stage, CBC avoided the costs

associated with processing court action and chasing these debts.

Developing a Practitioners Framework

Based on the experience of these projects, CBC have developed a framework for applying behavioural change principles to

successfully manage demand $-$ and sought to mainstream these approaches across the organisation.

The framework comprises:

$-$ leadership from the top $-$ an executive director is responsible for leading a senior team to develop major projects and

promote the framework

$-$ championing behaviour change techniques $-$ champions are appointed in each service area to work encourage staff to

apply the principles

$-$ raising awareness $$ by initially having senior speakers from the DWP and Cabinet Office present at workshops to staff

and councilors

$-$ promoting a project management methodology where insight and engagement precede intervention, and measurement

and evaluation ar