BOROUGH Council chiefs at Warrington have approved capital spending of up to £650,000 on a new Town Hall telephone system.
The new system will replace the existing one which is 25 years old and becoming increasingly expensive to maintain year-on-year.
It should enable the council to make cashable savings of around £250,000 over five years, made up of £150,000 in maintenance and software licence costs and £100,000 in reduced mobile phone calls.
Further savings and efficiencies should also be achieved via improved and more flexible working, according to Cllr Hitesh Patel, (pictured left) executive member for personnel and communications.
In a report to the executive board, Cllr Patel says the new system will provide lower costs through less line rental and more intelligent call routing that reduces mobile phone call costs.
It will enable less travelling between sites in Warrington, regionally and nationally, integrate with Contact Warrington, reduce reliance on administrative support staff and remove the need for a staffed switchboard.
Staff telephone numbers will follow them wherever they log on – even at home.
Maintenance costs will be lower and fault response times faster and the council will have substantially improved disaster recovery capability – weather, traffic, etc., as staff will be able to work from home or other locations as easily as being in the office.
The executive board was told that if the current system was not replaced there would have been a risk of support costs escalating and response times to failures getting longer.
This would impact on customers and staff, severely hampering the efficiency of the council.
Town Hall phone system could cost £650k
1717 Comments
Share.
About Author
Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
17 Comments
A bit repetative 🙂 🙂 Are additional savings going to be made because some of the support staff and switch board opperators may be made redundant as there will be no ‘reliance’ on them anymore? I’m all for new technology and and £100k bills on mobile phone charges alone is way OTT but I hope the new system doesn’t get hacked by automated foreign theives like Bill’s works phone did which cost him £500 in rogue calls. Will it be easier to contact council officers/departments directly etc in the future especially if they are ‘out and about’ as they usually are when you need to speak to them ?
ok so it’s not repetative now 🙂 🙂
Now that is a total waste of my money! When are these WBC Officers going to get into the real world and stop wasting Council Tax Payers money. If it was their own money they would certainly be more careful. If this is an example of the waste the “new” Council are going to make then we have made no improvement by elecvting a different Council. I thought our new Council were going to be more responsive to the needs of the electorate. Who did they ask before making this decision?
EH ???? Surely them saving 50k a year for at least 5 years is pretty good !?!
I shall reply to my own comment as I can’t edit it…………. I omitted to take into account the fact that it is costing them £650k OOPS ha ha. So should take them about 13 years to just recoup their initial outlay 🙁 But hey they will be making savings and it probably comes out of some government pot for ‘telecomunication/IT 21st century’ grant money anyway which has to be used on specific things 😉
As I read it, the current system is clapped out and needs replacing, and provided that they are getting a good deal on the new system, and it will save the money that it is supposed to, then it is an acceptable, in fact probably a good investment, and not a total waste of money at all. Our system of democracy means that the electorate have handed over to their elected repesentatives responsibilty for making such decisions on our behalf. If you don’t like that and want to change things, might I suggest that you stand for election, I understand that in Warrington, the next opportunity will be next May, unless of course you wish to stand in Poulton North, when it will be next month. Good luck if you do stand, Warrington residents will no doubt await the improvements that you will make to their Council with baited breath.
Eh….. Why have a go at me ? Where did I say it was a complete waste of money?? Maybe you should read my comments again… where I said ‘but hey they will be making savings’…… and also where I said in reply to the previous post that it has probably come out of some special grant pot of money and not money that should be used for things like roads etc. (which I have now worded differently so you can understand). For goodness sake….. and no I wont bother standing thanks very much. Of course there is always the possibility that you were replying to ‘Council Tax Payer’ and not me but as you have clicked the link to reply to me I have answered accordingly just incase 🙂 🙂
Labour starting to get shut of jobs through the back door what will that cost??? Also what happened to that promise of Terry o’Neill? Open and Transparent – WBC would save over £20K if they had a look at his expenses. So after slagging off the last lot re Ipads H Patel is spending £650K the only new thing he has done has put extra zeros on the end.
Usually with announcements like this, which are so soon after an election, you’ll find the proposals for this initiative started under the previous LibDem-Tory administration… Just like Cllr Barr is pointing out that it was he that has pulled together the plans for regenerating Bridge Street. So maybe we should ask the previous portfolio holder what he or she has to say? Does anyone know it was?
I’ve just read the agenda paper on the WBC website and it says the cost of the equipment will cost in the region of £450k-£650k. I can understand why Warrington Worldwide is using the inflated figure because it sounds more scandalous.
My reply was to CTP rather than you Dizzy.
Ooops never mind I enjoyed my little rant ha ha 😉
We all know that the savings outlined will not be saved. We have handed over responsibility to our elected representatives but that does not mean that they should be reckless with their spending proposals. In looking after our interest they need to act responsibly. All the reasons and advantages were given when the current system was installed and we don’t yet know, because we have not been told, where the money is coming from to fund this. Even if it is coming out of a fund that cannot be used for anything else it does not mean that it HAS to be spent since overall you and me will be funding this through either Council Tax or our Taxes.
After all the cut-backs and severe pruning plus redundancies, do we really care or want to be able to talk to the cllrs or powers that be?
Spend the money on the Libraries or something useful !!!!!!!!!
probably one of many and possibly out of date or superceeded but I found this interesting re councils plan for a ‘unified communications programme’ …. exec board meeting documentation July 2010. Sorry for the long link and you will have to cut and paste it into your browser.
http://cmis.warrington.gov.uk/cmis5/Document.ashx?czJKcaeAi5tUFL1DTL2UE4zNRBcoShgo=XZ6OxCvcwpfKvZ0fNIxFyvsDkTXrUrp%2Fs6n1x7v9Fk3cwwaVCQPnJQ%3D%3D&mCTIbCubSFfXsDGW9IXnlg%3D%3D=hFflUdN3100%3D&kCx1AnS9%2FpWZQ40DXFvdEw%3D%3D=hFflUdN3100%3D&uJovDxwdjMPoYv%2BAJvYtyA%3D%3D=ctNJFf55vVA%3D&FgPlIEJYlotS%2BYGoBi5olA%3D%3D=NHdURQburHA%3D&d9Qjj0ag1Pd993jsyOJqFvmyB7X0CSQK=ctNJFf55vVA%3D&WGewmoAfeNR9xqBux0r1Q8Za60lavYmz=ctNJFf55vVA%3D&WGewmoAfeNQ16B2MHuCpMRKZMwaG1PaO=ctNJFf55vVA%3D
Flaming council…. why can’t they go back to using empty baked bean cans tied together with a bit of string???? It worked perfectly well for me when I was a kid 25 years ago!!!
LOL 🙂 Sadly due to new H&S legislation and accident claims companies the use of cans and string are soon to be banned 😉