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Matrix funds new course helping young people transition out of childcare
 Market-leading workforce technology and services platform Matrix is providing funding for a new adult education course aimed at helping young people successfully transition out of the childcare system. Certified as City and Guilds Level 5, the Young Adults Skills Development Care Leavers’ Programme has been launched by business performance consultancy Ayming, in partnership with the London Borough of Islington and The Arsenal Foundation, the charitable arm of Arsenal Football Club.
The aim of the course is to develop inter-personal skills, workplace knowledge and wellbeing among care leavers, who frequently struggle with education, mental health, unemployment, crime and homelessness. Researchers from the Universities of York, Oxford and Exeter recently showed that almost a third of care leavers, for example, were not working or studying compared to just 2.4% of comparable young people with no experience the social care system. Furthermore, 25% of the UK’s homeless population are estimated to have been in care.
Matrix CEO, Mark Inskip summarises by outlining the importance of social value for the company, “This partnership with Ayming is one of many social value initiatives that we are proud to be leading. It is central to our core purpose of “connecting people to work” and working proactively with communities and under-represented groups to extend and broaden the reach of our positive social impact.”
Equipping care leavers with the skills to gain employment and live a more independent life will also benefit the UK economy. It’s estimated that if 1,000 young people leaving care were helped into work, it could generate up to £15 million in benefits savings over their lifetime, according to research by the Centre for Social Justice.
 Julian Panter Matrix has committed to a rolling funding cycle to the 12-week course, which will take two care-leaver groups a year. “We are committed to supporting and improving young people’s life chances as they leave the care system,” said the company’s London and Services Business Director, Julian Panter. “This new programme, created and delivered in partnership with Ayming’s People Performance and Development practice, brings our ambitions in this area to life.”
Commenting on setting up the programme, Scott Ward, Partner, People Performance and Development at Ayming, said: “We are delighted to be working within such a vital area to support these young adults in achieving their life ambitions irrespective of the challenges been presented to them. Our whole intention as a people-led organisation is to unlock human potential. With the support of Matrix and working with wonderful people at Islington Local Authority, we are able to accelerate even faster to support, grow and guide these individuals towards their ambitions of breaking the glass ceiling of social expectation.”
 Ward speaks from experience, having had to adjust to life outside the professional sports ‘bubble’ after his burgeoning football career as a goalkeeper ended prematurely. Fellow former athlete and England netball captain Serena Guthrie MBE is also leading the initiative with Ward.
“Led by phenomenal individuals Serena and Scott, the programme’s participant-centred approach will help young people leaving the care system develop their personal skills, as well as reset their views and expectations of what it means for them to be successful,” said Matthew Blood, Virtual School Head for Children with a Social Worker and London Borough of Islington.
 Enfield Council has teamed up with VisionTrack to lead the way in road safety and stay at the forefront of fleet innovation. The London borough has worked closely with its existing video telematics partner to develop a sophisticated AI-powered vehicle camera solution for its first fully-electric refuse collection vehicle (RCV). The Renault E-Tech D Wide 26-tonne truck has been specially-designed by Enfield Council and Renault Trucks, to create the most advanced and high-performing waste management vehicle currently available.
“Our aim was to develop an electric RCV of the future that brings together class-leading technologies and helps achieve sustainability, duty of care and road safety goals,” said Cllr Rick Jewell, Cabinet Member for Environment at Enfield Council. “The collaboration with VisionTrack will provide increased protection to our residents, refuse collection teams and other road users.”
The video telematics solution combines four AI cameras, for 360-degree vision and vulnerable road user (VRU) detection, along with two wing mirror cameras and an external speaker for audible lefthand turn warnings. The intelligent detection cameras use deep learning technology to identify pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and people on scooters, while disregarding street furniture.
With configurable safety zones, blind spots around the vehicle will be eliminated and drivers alerted to the precise location of nearby VRUs. Footage will automatically be displayed on an in-cab monitor, and supplemented with an audible, spoken warning. Road safety insight – including footage of collisions, near misses and harsh driving events – will also be uploaded to the Autonomise.ai IoT platform, so Enfield Council has complete visibility of driver, vehicle and fleet risk.
The ultra-quiet Renault Trucks E-Tech D Wide Low Entry Cab, equipped with a CP Davidson Titan refuse body, is the first of four to be delivered and will service local households. The electric RCV has been in development for over a year, with Enfield Council and Renault Trucks working in partnership to create a prototype that met the precise needs of a large, busy, London borough. It underwent extensive testing and road trials in Enfield, which demonstrated impressive performance levels, reliability and battery life.
Richard Kent, President of Global Sales at VisionTrack commented: “As a longstanding partner of Enfield Council, we have been supporting their road safety strategy for a number of years with our proven video telematics technologies. This latest initiative uses the latest advances in AI to deliver a ground-breaking solution for a revolutionary waste collection vehicle. It will demonstrate the potential of intelligent camera solutions – especially for heavy vehicles in the urban environment – in terms of 360 visibility, people detection and fleet risk reduction.”
 Mark Benson – Rivus With the pressures on public sector finances at an all-time high, we talk to Mark Benson, Emergency Services Fleet Consultant, at award winning fleet solutions provider, Rivus, about ways that critical public service fleets can maximise vehicle availability and fleet efficiencies to deliver significant cost savings, freeing up budget which can be redeployed to other areas within the organisation that require it the most.
“With public services under increasing pressure to deliver more services with less funding, the need for innovative solutions to generate cost savings and provide sustainable service improvements has never been greater.
“When it comes to the management of public sector fleets, procurement decisions can be weighted towards price. An example of this can be the north south divide in choice of vehicle manufacturers. If the capital cost of an asset is less, then this can deliver cost savings. However, this could be a false economy as the manufacturer may have a higher degree of vehicle off road time. As such, I would recommend a decision based on the whole life cost of the asset. This is where all elements such as fuel, insurance, tax, servicing and maintenance costs are included to ensure added value can be derived.
“Maximising vehicle availability by reducing off road time, lowering the costs of unscheduled events through preventative maintenance and finding other ways to increase in-house garage capacity at peak times can all create cost efficiencies that can be reinvested into newer, more efficient vehicles or staff training and recruitment.”
Is the public sector embracing the latest fleet management efficiencies?
“Efficiencies that could be considered a gold standard in outsourced fleet management such as strategic procurement, ensuring vehicles are fit for purpose and sourcing preventative maintenance solutions from a reliable partner, as well as avoiding running vehicles for longer than their shelf life could be adopted more widely within the public sector. Tender processes can often be structured to evaluate only the costs of running a fleet, rather than considering outsourcing as the tender scoring process is not set up to capture the wider value add.
“Take vehicle availability and measuring off road times as an example. Vehicle availability in critical fleets is circa 95% and is often reported as such through fleet management data. However, look more closely at the data and does this figure really take into account the time in garage, waiting time in a forecourt for a technician to become available or parts to arrive? Some service, maintenance and repair providers only measure vehicle off road time from when the vehicle goes onto the ramp, rather than taking account of the time the vehicle is sitting on site and waiting for parts to arrive or sat at dealerships waiting to be worked on.”
“Rivus consistently delivers industry leading Vehicle off Road (VoR) times for its customers, with an average of 97%-98%%, which can significantly increase with the adoption of our innovative Vehicle Check app. Rivus track VoRs rate from the time the vehicle arrives at one of its garages.
What is fleet outsourcing?
“A simple definition of fleet outsourcing is the handing over of the responsibility for managing vehicle service bookings, taking care of fleet administration such as parking fines, clean air zone charges and so on, vehicle service, maintenance and repair to an external party. Public sector organisations should consider outsourcing when there is potential for certain support functions to be completed more quickly, efficiently and cost effectively by an external specialist. Tasks that are not core competencies of the organisation are prime for being contracted out, so the fleet team can focus on operating the fleet.
What are the benefits of outsourcing fleet management?
“In short, substantial. From cost reduction, increased efficiency, expanded services to specialist expertise. Outsourcing potentially allows you to focus your resources on your core activities. But for it to be successful the decision needs to be an informed and collaborative one from procurement, fleet managers and the fleet management partner.
“Rivus is known as the experts in managing critical fleets and the biggest benefit for our customers is the consultancy, advice and guidance, drawing on our data driven approach, our extensive independently owned garage network and our expertise in capacity planning. This enables us to achieve optimum vehicle uptime and reduce unplanned or unscheduled maintenance events.”
Which elements of fleet provision can be ‘outsourced’?
Fleet management services can and will cover all aspects of an organisation’s fleet operations considering culture, objectives, cost and relationships. It is essential that you collaborate with your outsourced partner to build a fully bespoke response to your fleet needs – there is no one size fits all approach. We found this recently working with a government department who were keen to improve environmental credentials of their fleet yet had to consider the rural locations of its vehicles and access to garages.
We were able to work closely with then to understand the operational requirements of the fleet and propose a mobile service, maintenance and repair solution to maintain essential fleet vehicles out in the field (quite literally!).
Not everything lends itself to outsourcing but a blended approach with a trusted partner delivers a win for everyone, offering a centralised solution with modular services built in, which include a combination of the services below.”
Potential fleet management services for outsourcing:
| · Economic review and consultancy
· Supplier terms negotiation
· Structure of maintenance policy
· Supply and management of data
· Automated invoicing
· Reporting for key stakeholders
· Management of existing suppliers
· Duty of Care advice/management
· Mileages capture
· Integrated accident management
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- Vehicle renewal process
- Arrangement of demonstration vehicles
- Management authorisation process
- Management of delivery/handover
- Management of pooled vehicles
- Management of short-term rentals
- Management of maintenance
- Management of warranty issues
- Administration of fines and charges
- Provision of insurance information
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What other considerations need to be factored into outsourcing critical fleet management?
“Understanding how your fleet is currently performing and where there are areas for improvements are key to realising cost savings and efficiencies. It is essential to understand the total cost of operating and managing a fleet.
- Operational modelling and data analysis
“Outsourcing fleet arrangements to an external supplier must give your organisation access to improved service and added value, that would normally not be achieved through your current operation. These could include service or operational modelling, in-depth financial analysis to establish a per vehicle or lifetime cost to be able to compare and contrast services.
- Micro and macro cost considerations
“To ensure that the decision to outsource considers all factors, appropriate costing should be applied to both macro and micro levels of expense, from the cost of providing the vehicle provision and in life service, maintenance and repair, plus administrative and operational overheads.
“Macro costs include building rent, utilities, facilities management, security, postage, diagnostic equipment and tooling. Micro costs show how much day-to-day activities build up and are often not considered as a direct fleet expense, such as invoice handling, phone time, driver contact, booking and managing vehicle maintenance.
“The entire customer experience should be based around the needs of the driver community, ensuring that employees receive prompt, simple and expert service and advice. Any problems should be addressed at the earliest possible opportunity to ensure that all main events involved in the life cycle of driver provision present no escalation points to the organisation, effectively removing all operational input, apart from any actions strategic in nature.
“A highly important part of changing either method of supply or mode of supply is the process of transition from one source to another. This process can invariably cause frustrations and put organisations off making the change. However, partnering with an experienced provider you’ll be involved in developing a detailed an in-depth transition plan to make it as seamless as possible for the business units and the drivers involved.
“Once a transition plan is in place, the partner organisations should work closely together to ensure a swift and smooth transition, paying particular attention to any potential risks that may be encountered such as resource availability, time pressures, agreement of contract terms – most of which would normally be ironed out through the collaborative tender process.
 “Rivus works closely with its customer teams on implementation and are adept at developing robust communication plans, transfer of undertakings through TUPE, supplier transition procedures and Duty of Care legislation to keep colleagues safe and secure.
“We have earned a reputation in our industry as the experts in managing the UK’s most critical fleets, and following a rigorous, multi-lot, competitive tender process, which began in February 2022, Rivus has been appointed to take care of the Metropolitan Police Service’s prestigious fleet for a period of up to 10 years.
“With over 43,000 officers and staff, the Met is the UK’s largest police force. It has over 5,200 fleet assets on the roads in Greater London, travelling 52 million miles each year.
“Their vehicles are under significantly more strain than the average vehicle on the roads of London and require a specialist fleet provider with the expertise to keep the fleet capable, responsive and safe. The implementation process for the Met fleet to be outsourced to Rivus has been a 12-month collaborative process to achieve the best outcome all round.”
How can Rivus support the public sector with critical fleets?
“A key differentiator for Rivus has always been our independently owned garage network of 78 LCV and HGV garages that delivers industry-leading Vehicle off Road (VoR) times for our customers. The business manages over 120,000 vehicle assets and delivers over 500,000 SMR events through our network every year. We can help relieve some of the pressures that fleet operators are feeling, given current pressures on the UK’s external SMR garage network.
“The business has also worked hard to develop a data driven approach for our customers. Rivus Insights is an innovative analytics platform which helps customers drive efficiencies within their fleets and the new, proprietary Vehicle Check App from Rivus makes it easier for fleet customers to manage their compliance and safety responsibilities. This is particularly advantageous to any HGV fleets in the public sector as it is recognised by the DVSA for Earned Recognition and contributes to HGV fleet operators Operational Licence.
 “In addition, to support and inform customers on their journey to zero emission fleets, Rivus has an Alternative Fuels team that specialises in helping critical fleets with the decarbonisation transition This includes helping public sector fleets fully understand the true cost of transitioning to alternatively fuelled vehicles in their fleet operations.
“Our aim is to enable public sector organisations with critical fleets to concentrate on what they do best. For example, if an Ambulance trust has ambulances off the road due unforeseen circumstances, that ambulance is not on active duty and helping to save lives. We are committed to working proactively to assess the monetary impact of outsourcing considerations. We look to remove the daily noise that fleets can cause, allowing public sector organisations to operate at a more strategic level and not get caught up in the nuts and bolts!”
To find out how Rivus could work with you to increase your fleet efficiency and reduce fleet expenditure, contact us today: www.rivusgroup.co.uk
NHS trusts need a lot of technology, but they face complex, structural challenges when it comes to procurement, and these tend to work against smaller companies and innovation. The Highland Marketing advisory board met recently to discuss the issues and the role of marketing.
 NHS acute trusts need a lot of technology. Infrastructure – cloud or physical servers to host software applications, broadband and wi-fi networks, and devices for professionals to use them on, enterprise IT systems to manage their operations and help clinicians to do their jobs, patient facing systems – from basic portals to more sophisticated personal health records or virtual ward platforms, along with innovation to streamline operations and patient pathways.
However, the process for finding out what is on offer, and then procuring it, is complex – for trust IT leaders and vendors. For a start, Ian Hogan, the associate director of digitally integrated care of the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, pointed out there isn’t just one health tech market – each class of IT effectively has its own.
“A lot depends on what you are in the market for and whether there are restrictions imposed by policy, or procurement guidelines, or things like that,” he said. “The electronic patient record market is a really good example. A lot of trusts will only enter the market when there’s a national initiative and funding.
“When they do, there’s only a handful of vendors. So, the whole process becomes very focused on procurement. You know what you are going to get, but it’s much harder to know what else you might want or need.”
Tight relationships, wildly competitive markets
Other sectors of the market are shaped by other factors. For example, the advisory board felt that when it comes to infrastructure, trusts tend to work with trusted suppliers, who already understand their IT estates, and can advise on upgrades and new partnerships.
Whereas, when it comes to apps and innovation, trusts can find themselves in a crowded market in which EPR vendors offering extensions to their systems, SMEs offering products developed at the start of the web 2.0 era, and new entrants are all competing for their attention.
 Yet, even here there may be other forces at play. For example, ministers and policy makers may want to prioritise specific technologies such as flow systems to “address winter pressures” or virtual wards to “expand capacity” – which may slow progress in other areas.
Or, NHS trusts may be encouraged to buy from framework contracts intended to show that companies are financially stable, have met certain standards, and can offer specified functionality – but in doing so shut out new entrants or innovators who don’t know about or can’t comply with them.
Or, integrated care systems may be looking to establish IT strategies for their areas that encourage providers to converge systems by running joint procurements – which may lead to one solution being ‘picked’. Although, board members agreed, that won’t guarantee it will be deployed.
James Norman, who has worked on both the NHS and the supplier side, said: “Shared procurements can fail if there is a ‘not invented here’ mentality or they’re seen as ‘the big tertiary hospital trying to throw its weight around. Plus, there are genuine challenges in getting the resources together to implement and keeping them together if people are at different stages of readiness.”
Structural change needed to support innovation
The common theme was that, one way or another, the complexities of the NHS’ tech markets tend to favour bigger players with older technology than smaller players who may have more innovative ideas. The advisory board identified a number of things that could be done to improve the situation.
One would be for trusts to develop – and perhaps publish – long-term IT and procurement strategies. This would give those responsible for delivering them more time to scan the market and give suppliers a better idea of what they would be looking for – and when.
Nicola Haywood-Alexander, a former integrated care system CIO who now works for the police in Lincolnshire, said she had been able to start moving in this direction. She has established a target architecture and design priorities, and secured senior agreement that no technology will be bought that doesn’t fit with them.
But, at the same time, she is establishing arrangements to give vendors access to her team. “We have ideas for what we want to maintain and what we want to procure in each area [of our strategy],” she said. “We want to identify a number of strategic partners and work with them, so everybody knows where they are, and what we’ll be looking to buy, and where we’ll need development and innovation to succeed.”
However, to move in this direction, the NHS would need a much more stable policy and funding environment than it has experienced for the past decade or so. Ian Hogan said that as things stand “it is hard to plan more than 12-months ahead, because you only know what money you are going to get in-year.”
Even that money can come through very late. By the time NHS England has signed off on its plans and the Treasury has rejigged its budgets, a trust can get the money to run a procurement just weeks before deployment has to start.
Marketing works – if it’s impactful and focused on solving problems
Other ideas for addressing the challenges of the health tech market included: rebooting the Academic Health Science Networks, which were set up to champion innovation, but have a mixed record on helping SMEs; setting up new company and product directories; and revisiting the requirements of framework contracts.
Ian Hogan said: “From my point of view, the best thing the NHS could do is create a forum to improve visibility. The AHSNs haven’t really delivered what was hoped. We need a new way to promote technology and its benefits to trusts and to give organisations a way to reach us.”
In the absence of these changes, marketing and PR are going to play a big role in helping health tech companies to get in front of potential influencers and customers. The advisory board had strong views on what doesn’t work in this respect.
Cindy Fedell, a former NHS CIO who now works in Canada, said: “The chance to talk to a bunch of vendors, when I was refreshing or researching something, was great because they knew about the latest and greatest stuff and what is going on.
“But the flip side of that was getting sales calls when I had my head down. I got some terrible calls. Somebody wanted me to put something into one of our departments, and all he could say about it was that it was cheap! I said it might be, but it doesn’t fit with what we are trying to do.”
When it comes to what works, advisory board members said they still valued conferences and exhibitions. And they felt that direct marketing has its place. However, they argued that emails or calls need to come from a trusted contact, a sales lead with a good knowledge of the NHS, or a company with some name-recognition to stand a chance of being opened or answered.
Ian Hogan said: “I really value Rewired, HETT, the big IT shows, but there are a lot of stands, so you have got as long as it takes me to walk past your stand to grab my attention. That probably means you’ve got two or three seconds to tell me what you have got to offer. It’s the same with email. If I don’t know you and you don’t grab me, it’s likely to be deleted.”
The CIOs on the panel also emphasised that companies that want to sell to trusts need to do their research, understand their specific problems, and focus in on how they can solve them, rather than on what they want to sell.
In a very, very tough financial and working environment, they also emphasised that companies must be able to show return on investment, after accounting for the considerable cost of change that can be incurred from asking IT and clinical teams to retrain and adopt new systems or pathways.
Engage clinicians – but don’t sell to them!
Meantime, another approach that was not well received was companies going direct to clinicians or encouraging “shadow IT” – systems that have been bought by departments and put on the network, without the procurement, security, and IG safeguards that need to be followed.
James Norman said: “If you can engage your clinicians to act as another pair of eyes for what is coming onto the market, that can be very valuable; and clinical engagement is essential when it comes to implementation. But the CIO needs to work out where things fit into the business strategy and the infrastructure.”
Many of the challenges discussed by the board are not new. Chair Jeremy Nettle said that when he was involved with techUK: “I tried to find a way to put small companies in front of the service integrators [that had been employed by the National Programme for IT to digitise the NHS] because it was clear even then that we needed some kind of dating agency to show off what they were doing.” He believes this is still relevant in the market today.
Ian Hogan said: “We still need a beauty parade, because without one we don’t have time to go out and about to find the new ideas and the niche providers, and that keeps us stuck with what we know.”
 Martin James by Martin James, VP EMEA, Aerospike
Data is crucial in allowing any government or public sector organisation to make informed decisions to drive mission-critical applications appropriately. Whether improving the supply chain, connecting cities for a more efficient traffic flow, to respond to terrorist threats swiftly, real-time data is the linchpin. The trick is to process and manage data so that operational costs, efficiencies, and outcomes are improved while maintaining performance at scale.
Many organisations rely on legacy systems to manage data rather than embark on a digital transformation journey to a modern data architecture that provides greater efficiencies. The Organising for Digital Delivery report from the Digital Economy Council found that, in 2019, the government faced cumulative annual costs of £2.3bn to maintain legacy IT. This represented almost half of the £4.7bn in total that was spent on IT across the government that year. The irony is that rather than start the journey to modernise their data architecture, many public and private sector organisations simply add more servers to legacy systems, adding costs and complexities.
Data is proliferating at an explosive rate as public sector organisations increasingly rely on cloud-native architectures. The amount of data created over the next three years is projected to be more than that created over the past three decades, according to Worldwide Global DataSphere Forecast 2020-24. UK citizens, accustomed to instant digital experiences in other areas of their lives, expect nothing less when interacting with the public sector. The good news is that it is becoming easier to meet this expectation.
Dealing with existing challenges
It’s important to acknowledge the key challenges that public sector IT departments face. First, it is harder to scale to meet demand if additional data cannot be added to existing workloads to support increased transactions, analysis, or operations efficiently. Secondly, it is costly to add memory and storage to existing mainframes. If not added, monitoring and automation tools that allow for observability and seamless processing become inaccessible. Third, unless costly extra bandwidth is utilised, legacy technologies will be slow, compromising the processing of high-volume transactions of critical services, such as fraud detection.
Modern real-time data platforms meet these challenges and support expanding workloads without impacting performance. As more data becomes available, the modern database must scale to ensure each customer experience is instant and accurate. This must happen for 100 or a billion transactions in submillisecond times to meet customer expectations. To do this, data must be optimised for better movement and storage while employing easily managed automation tools so data clusters can be added and data replicated across the data centre ecosystem.
Due to compatibility and scaling issues adding memory to legacy mainframes is costly and complex. The modern real-time data platform that leverages SDDs or flash memory combined with DRAM or a hybrid memory architecture improves performance and allows for a favourable total cost of ownership. Furthermore, a modern real-time data platform must always be available, with fail-safe mechanisms in place to ensure a seamless experience regardless of power outages, weather events, or other issues that would interrupt the performance of many legacy systems.
The process of modernising a data architecture should not be the costly, resource-sucking endeavour many CTOs worry about. With careful planning and selecting the right vendor, the impact on continual production should be minimal.
An example from the private sector well illustrates this. Based in Paris, Criteo is a global Ad Tech company that needed to “future-proof” its data architecture to meet the growing requests to serve billions of advertisements in real-time. Further, to meet their client’s demands, the ads had to match the prospective buyer’s needs. Re-platforming or the process of moving from one data platform to another is exhausting and expensive, but not in this case. Criteo chose the right vendor, and the move met the intense speed and scale needs of Ad Tech and saved the company millions. Criteo reduced its server count by 80 percent annually in spite of increased data loads while dramatically reducing CO2 emissions.
Proving the case for TCO
To test the proposition, Forrester Research worked with us to imagine a ‘composite’ organisation based on several companies that had previously re-platformed with us. These included an international conglomerate with an extensive user base and a well-known brand. The composite organisation used several hundred servers and had a team of developers.
After analysis, Forrester found a reduced server footprint of 55% to 75% on average each year. Prior to using the modern real-time data platform, additional servers were continually added to legacy architectures to achieve performance expectations. With the modern real-time data platform the overall number of required servers was reduced by 50% to 70% in the first year. By the third year, server reductions increased by 60% to 80% as more existing workloads were added. The cost savings ranged from $2.4M to 3.3M over the three-year investment.
Embrace change now to provide services for the future
The relentless growth of data will not slow as more data and connected devices will beget more data. Nor will the demand for instant, accurate outcomes diminish. These will only increase. To meet these realities, state organisations must do more than add servers. It is imperative to choose a data platform vendor that provides persistent performance at unlimited scale while providing a lower total cost of ownership now and in the future.
Final plans have been set out for the latest stage of work aimed at making Manchester city centre safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
As set out in the Council’s City Centre Transport Strategy (CCTS), a central aim is for 90% of all peak morning trips to the city centre to be made by foot, cycle or public transport by 2040.
Following a consultation in 2022, proposed improvements to the road network in the city centre have been decided on, with work due to start during the summer of 2023.
The changes that will be brought in include:
- A CYCLOPS junction at Peter Street/Quay Street.
- Improved bus stop integration with cycle lanes, allowing cyclists to safely pass buses which have stopped for alighting passengers.
- Implementation of sustainable drainage in the form of shrubs and rain gardens are proposed on Whitworth Street West, Old Deansgate and Chester Road.
- Changes to the junction at Great Jackson Street/Chester Road which has now been included within the scope of this programme – increasing the radius of the junction to naturally slow vehicles, as well as adding a zebra and Belisha beacon crossing.
- Relocation of bus stops to more optimal locations.
- Additional disabled parking bays to improve accessible access on Deansgate.
A full list of the works that will be taking place as part of the Active Travel Fund (ATF) City Centre Scheme can be found via the Council’s website.
Funding for this set of works was secured through the Government’s Active Travel Fund, which supports councils creating easier and safer routes for people to travel.
It is hoped through the CCTS the Council will:
- Encourage more people to walk and cycle along this city centre route.
- Link walking and cycling routes together, providing a linked-up network.
- Reduce the volume of traffic entering the city centre (in line with the CCTS 2040 vision).
- Reduce the risk from road traffic accidents.
- Deliver health, environmental and congestion benefits.
Councillor Tracey Rawlins, Executive Member for Environment and Transport, said: “Transforming the way in which we get around Manchester is a key ambition of the Council in the coming years. From a car-dominated model we want to encourage more people to walk, wheel or use public transport to get around.
“But in order to encourage this change we need to re-imagine the infrastructure across our city. By giving over more space to pedestrian and cyclists we hope to encourage a shift towards more environmentally friendly ways of travelling, as well as finding new ways to boost people’s health and wellbeing.”
Workforce management platform and services company Matrix is strengthening its commitment to providing a world-class contingent workforce management system, starting with the launch of Matrix Prism, powered by OutSystems’ low-code development system, which will replace Matrix existing proprietary platform, CR.net.
Matrix Prism will provide an intuitive end-to-end workflow management platform that covers the full spectrum of indirect workforce recruitment and supplier engagement. Combining streamlined and automated workflows with expert support to deliver compliant outcome-based projects, consultancy and professional services engagements to support statement of work (SOW) procurement and temporary workforce hiring.
This platform investment reinforces Matrix commitment to enhancing user experience, increasing the breadth and depth of functionality and continuing its strategy to provide intuitive and leading-edge technology solutions, supporting customers to leverage maximum value from their indirect management programmes. The first functional module of Matrix Prism is the Milestone module, which launches this month. The Milestone module of Prism provides customers with a single interface and deep functionality to support the procurement and management of outcome-based projects and professional services to support SOW procurement. The choice of working with OutSystems state of the art low-code technology will be a key agility enabler as Matrix continues to lead the market in progressive technology solutions for the sector.
 Ashley Doody, CPTO at Matrix The project is headed up by Ashley Doody, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Matrix. Prior to joining Matrix, Doody was one of the masterminds behind the development of the Hapi employee wellbeing, benefits and engagement platform, which was built from scratch and is now used by over one million people across the UK.
According to Gartner, low-code technology will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity by 2024, accelerated by the need for businesses to deliver agile digital solutions following the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This project has been on the cards for some time now, but we opted for a low-code solution to increase our speed to market and have the ability to build new solutions more time-effectively,” explains Doody. “It means that we’re able to evolve and enhance functionality within the platform and can react much more quickly to changing requirements – both in the market and from our customers.”
Working with Doody is Product Director, David Terry. He comments, “Our development approach puts our customer and supplier stakeholders right at the heart of our functional and user experience design process. Creating customer and supplier steering groups to inform, shape and guide the features, functions and user experience design that matter most to them. This approach is a central philosophy of our development and continuous improvement programme, ensuring that the opinions and feedback from our key users are both actively sought and acted upon”.
Matrix approached OutSystems to help it take its entire indirect workforce sourcing, engagement and management process in house and build a modern platform that would provide a slicker and frictionless experience for its suppliers and candidates” said Andy Shearer, RVP, Customer Success EMEA at OutSystems.
The launch of Matrix Prism is just the beginning of a wider transformation programme, under our strategy to re-platform and upgrade Matrix’s purpose-built and already functionally market-leading CR.net platform, providing a consumer grade user experience across the entire indirect workforce management sourcing and engagement process.
“At Matrix, we are on a strong growth trajectory and investing heavily in our business. Technology plays a fundamental role in that,” says Mark Inskip, CEO, Matrix. “After all, we’re a tech business so it’s vital that we are offering a best-in-class solution for our clients and the market. This is just the beginning with further innovation to be announced soon.”
Align, the joint venture between Bouygues Travaux Publics, a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, Sir Robert McAlpine, and VolkerFitzpatrick, a subsidiary of VolkerWessels that is delivering the Central 1 portion of HS2 Phase One, has chosen a next generation procurement delivery solution which can result in up to 70% reduction in carbon emissions previously caused by daily deliveries to site, as part of its ongoing commitment to supporting sustainability and innovation in the sector.
Inspired by the Amazon Locker solution, the secure by design VJ iStore® (patent pending) is located at Align’s site in Rickmansworth and consists of a 40 ft high bespoke modular shipping container which acts as a vending machine. It will help ensure that Align’s supply chain contractors can be fed a constant supply of their most used products that can be clicked and collected in a matter of minutes directly on-site at the point of need.
 Over 30 different Align contractors are authorised to procure and collect from the VJ iStore®, a unique solution from VJ Technology. There are almost 300 sperate items within the store ranging from bolts, washers, nails, sealants, hand tools, paints, lubricants, mechanical anchors, locks, foams and brooms.
Products are available 24/7 which in turn increases productivity significantly and are only paid for once they have been collected, positively impacting cashflow. It is replenished once every 10 to 14 days as managed by the active stock control system resulting in an up to 70% reduction in carbon emissions previously caused by daily deliveries to site.
Electra Thanopoulou, Buyer at Align, said: “As an early adopter of this solution we were able to work closely with VJ Technology to help them refine the offering, which we believe is an exciting development which helps address a number of challenges we face. Perhaps most importantly though the reduction in daily deliveries that reduce our impact on both the environment and the local communities we operate in.”
Peter Mckeown, Cross Passage Superintendent, Align said: “We use the VJ iStore® 24/7 and so far 25% of our orders have been out of hours – before 8am or after 5pm – and 15% have been on weekends. Previously this could have resulted in project delays and or rescheduling, but this solution enables us to continue.”
Andrew Mobbs, CEO at VJ Technology said: “These are challenging times for the sector and we are on a mission to de-risk the construction and infrastructure supply chain, playing our part to help projects finish on budget and on time. Everything we do revolves around how we can make things easier and better for the customer and
The VJ iStore® is just another step in this journey and is absolutely a part of our long-term growth strategy.
Achieving for Children (AfC) has chosen to partner with Huggg, the specialist platform which allows organisations to send and manage retail vouchers at scale to those in need, to provide digital disbursements and targeted assistance to children, young people, and their families. This includes various forms of support such as weekly care allowances, general reimbursements and targeted support.
The partnership will mean that AfC will no longer be reliant on cash for providing services for children at satellite sites located throughout the boroughs, eliminating the logistical problems caused by manual handling, bank signatories not being based at the sites, and the involvement of cash couriers. The Huggg platform also generates real-time reports reducing time-consuming admin cycles and enables AfC to manage top-ups for different sub-teams.
 Marie Peach Matthew Bond, Digital Transformation Manager at Achieving for Children said: “With the Huggg platform if someone needs money for their weekly shop or emergency supplies, we can issue retail vouchers to ensure that targeted support is being provided, rather than relying on cash or BACS. Using cash gives a lot of responsibility to young people who are still learning how to manage their, sometimes, new independence. Huggg provides us with an efficient and seamless process meaning we can respond to a request in as little as 10 minutes.”
Marie Peach, Account Manager – Charities & Public Sector at Huggg said: “We work with over 500 local authorities, councils, CABs, charities and housing associations so we understand the limited resources and time that many of these organisations have to distribute support to vulnerable people.
“Our solution has simplified and streamlined the internal processes at Achieving for Children, saving them time and money and allowing them to get targeted support to individuals quickly and easily.”
 Added Health – Dr Michael Stein (left) and Prof Chris Butler The way we deliver healthcare in the UK has to change, says Dr Michael Stein, CEO of Added Health. He explains how advances in medical research and digital technology might now transform the lives of millions and save the NHS £billions.
The NHS is a powerful force for good. It has been brilliant, and highly efficient, at delivering care when we fall seriously ill. But the COVID pandemic has made plain a huge problem. It can be equally poor at stopping us from getting ill in the first place.
This has contributed to the pandemic tipping the UK further into a health crisis. By the start of 2023, there were more than seven million people waiting for NHS treatment. Millions more people have been left suffering chronic physical and mental health conditions.
The adage ‘prevention is better can cure’ has never been more true. At Added Health, we call it ‘pre-emptive health’ – tackling behaviours before they impact on long-term health and life chances.
Added Health is an app that, uniquely, provides comprehensive care and support across five pillars of health and wellbeing – nutrition, exercise, sleep, wellbeing, and relationships.
We call it your Health HQ in your pocket. We are also the first personal health and wellness app to be CQC-regulated for screening and diagnostic services.
Based in Oxford, our aim is to provide our clients with long-term, affordable, tailored and research-based support, so they can live healthier, happier and longer active lives.
It is what the government wants, too. A 2019 Green Paper describes the need for a ‘national preventative healthcare strategy based on proactive, predictive and personalised prevention’.
Such a strategy will need to make full use of latest digital technologies to be adopted by patients and be scalable. It will need innovative thinking, from outside the NHS.
It will need to be low-cost, and use proven behaviour change techniques to drive results. And it will have to be evidence-based and comprehensive in its scope, to meet all needs.
That is precisely what Added Health aims to deliver.
Global brains trust
I co-founded Added Health in 2020 after witnessing the devastation caused by hidden poor health at first-hand. A brilliant NHS physician – a close friend and a former colleague – died suddenly in his 50s.
He had not known he had severe heart disease and suffered a massive heart attack. I was shocked that a leading doctor could be taken from us this way. How, I asked, can we stop this happening?
The answer is Added Health. I have developed the concept with co-founder Professor Chris Butler. Chris is Professor of Primary Care at Oxford University and Director of the university’s clinical trials unit.
He is also co-Chief Investigator of PANORAMIC, the on-going trials platform that assesses the efficacy of new COVID therapies.
From the beginning, we have wanted science and evidence to be at the heart of this new service. For example, Added Health draws on latest research showing how our physiological and nervous systems are interconnected.
Crucially, the service is delivered by caring, well trained coaches (guides) supported by technology, in that order. To be truly effective, technology must be used to enhance the human relationships essential to good health practice.
We are also building a global brains trust, drawing together experts like Microsoft’s Worldwide General Manager of Health, Neil Jordan, and Mayo Clinic cardiologist Charles Cannan, to help guide Added Health’s development.
Motivating change
So, how does Added Health work?
A client who signs up for our service completes a detailed questionnaire about their health and lifestyle. This is reviewed by a qualified doctor to identify if specific medical interventions may be needed.
Our client then has a consultation with a qualified and experienced coach to establish their goals. It may be to lose weight, or to improve sleep, or to address a chronic condition, such as diabetes.
Every coach is trained to use Motivational Interviewing (MI). This is a behaviour change technique – proven by many peer-reviewed studies, and used widely in the NHS – to enhance motivation and achieve goals.
MI was developed by psychologists Professor Steve Rollnick and Professor William Miller, and Chris Butler. Steve Rollnick is Added Health’s Head Coach and a member of our advisory board.
Based on insights from the questionnaire, guidance from Added Health doctors, and the consultation, the coach then draws up a personal plan, which is reviewed and agreed by the client.
Each plan’s implementation is supported with regular communication through text messaging and delivery of tailored content. This can include fitness plans, recipes for healthy meals, and behaviour change encouragement.
We’re developing content for specific issues, for example, weight loss, gut reset, gout, and – coming soon – menopause. Clients can also have further face-to-face consultations, if necessary.
Digital innovation
Central to this approach is the use of machine learning to best use the huge and ever-growing pool of anonymised health and lifestyle data we’re gathering.
Making clients feel their needs are met is critical to their progress. However, over time, more shaping of personal plans can be achieved using this responsive software, monitored by our doctors and coaches.
Tellingly, as long as there is an existing relationship established by an initial consultation, we have found delivering support through texting does not diminish its impact. Meanwhile, machine learning will allow us to drive continuous improvement, and deliver services at scale, at lower cost.
We have been accepting clients for less than 12 months. But early results are very encouraging. Take Simon, aged 50:
“Within six weeks, my cholesterol, blood pressure and urates were down, and I lost 7kg. I felt energetic and mentally sharper. The osteoarthritis in my hips was improved.
“So, I came off meds for cholesterol and gout because it’s under control naturally. By 12 weeks, I had lost 10kg, my waist was 2″ less and I remain off all meds still.”
Simon’s experience reflects Added Health’s enormous potential: chronic conditions eased, even eliminated; wellbeing and life chances improved; NHS costs reduced; all achieved with minimal input from hard-pressed GPs.
Business health
 A key area where we think we can make a real difference is in helping employers. They are increasingly anxious about the impact of poor health on their organisations, exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.
Research shows employees feeling below par can cost a business, on average, a lost month of productivity every year. Around 30% of employees have a chronic medical condition.
A survey of UK employers showed how between 2021 and 2022, absences increased 29% and ‘presenteeism’ by 18%. The number of people intending to leave their jobs increased to 41%.
In a 2021 study, McKinsey found effectively treating depression and anxiety could lead to a 4:1 financial return on investment in terms of improved employee health and productivity.
We want to work with employers to address these issues and realise the advantages that will follow. We can develop a programme bespoke to their needs, based on workforce profile and activity.
That rich pool of anonymised data can be used to understand an organisation’s health at a granular level to design a programme with specific objectives, for example to improve workforce happiness, productivity or employee retention.
Based on our results, key members of staff, who may be considering retiring early or reducing their hours because of debilitating chronic conditions, can get a new lease of life, with renewed energy and purpose that benefits both them and their employers.
Profound impact
We’re putting these concepts to the test with an imminent Added Health study with a group of employees at Oxford University. Another study will start soon with a cohort of primary care patients.
As a scientist, I want to see the results. But I am confident they will confirm this medically-led, coach-implemented, and technology-enhanced approach to pre-emptive health could profoundly improve personal health and NHS finances, if widely adopted.
The urgent need for change is now. What is exciting is we now have the know-how and the technology to make that change happen.
Dr Michael Stein MB ChB, BSc (hons) (UCT), D Phil (Oxon) is a health entrepreneur who has been developing new ways to deliver healthcare for more than 25 years. He also practised medicine in the NHS and carried out research and lectures in immunology and pathology at Oxford University.
 Caroline Davis By Caroline Davis, Head of Public Sector Leasing at Triple Point
We know the green transition must involve local authorities if the UK is to meet its net zero commitments. That 78% of local authorities in England declared a climate emergency, and many local authorities have already made their own commitments on reaching net zero is reflective of the urgency and desire to push for a greener future at the local level to improve living standards, support jobs, and attract investment.
The challenge is that soaring inflation and a shortfall of £3.4 billion estimated for council budgets in 2023-4 means that local authorities are under unprecedented pressure. Money is often not available to fulfil essential council services whilst meeting commitments to transition infrastructure and services away from fossil fuels. The solution: not letting local government face this task alone.
At such a time, non-bank lenders have a vital role to play in furnishing authorities with much-needed financing. Leasing can help authorities conserve cash, and spread the cost of the assets they need, while fulfilling their essential services for communities. This can come in the guise of leasing commercial vehicles, medical equipment, modular buildings, and IT equipment to public sector organisations such as NHS trusts, as well as councils, leisure centres, ambulance trusts, and schools across the country.
Fewer funds for green assets
Take Electric Vehicles (EVs), considered the key technology to decarbonising road transport – the highest emitting sector of the UK economy today. Decarbonising the sector requires all types of vehicles to go electric, from cars and vans, through to specialist commercial vehicles such as tippers and refuse collection vehicles (RCVs). It also requires the capacity of regional bodies such as local councils to deliver on this goal.
A survey taken at the beginning of 2022 showed that, although 81% of councils have an electric vehicle strategy in place, 84% of vehicles operated by councils are still diesel-fuelled. This is clearly a problem, but it’s also unsurprising. For example, diesel RCVs boast among the worst fuel economy of all major vehicle categories. They are also significantly cheaper than their electric powered counterparts.
Leasing EVs such as electric commercial vehicles (including specialist vehicles) therefore represents a solution. Budgetary constraints can prevent local authorities from acquiring EVs outright given the high initial costs. But by spreading the cost of acquisition over several years, the transition to greener roads can become a reality.
Flexible and Tailored Leasing as a solution for councils
At Triple Point, we take a flexible approach to meet the needs of each customer we work with. Understanding that environmental technology such as EVs are in a state of constant evolution, we react quickly to these changes and offer tailored solutions and flexible leasing terms which ensure that public sector operations face minimal disruption and are in-step with the latest technological developments.
Our Public Sector Asset Finance team has financed large numbers of vehicles and assets to local bodies with a combined worth of £439m since 2007. From funding PPE making machines for NHS trusts, to providing modular buildings and equipment to schools, Triple Point’s diverse portfolio and expertise in the public sector continues to support local authorities with the financial tools needed to benefit from updated assets and technology.
Financing vehicles for local authorities already plays a significant role in Triple Point’s portfolio and supplying councils with EVs for the green transition is set to be a growing area of importance for Triple Point as the transition away from fossil fuels gathers momentum. It is clear that the path to a successful green transition in the UK will have to involve local government, and in the coming years, it will be paramount that councils have the support and expertise of non-bank lenders to ensure that the UK fulfils its ambitions to become a global leader in combating climate change.
 Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider and Leader 2022 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, Hybrid Cloud and Network Mobility, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) today announced a collaboration to help manage and support Defra’s core network infrastructure used to host and run their critical services, benefiting all UK citizens. The agreement will help Defra to reduce network risk and manage technical debt as it modernises its systems and continues with its journey to adopt cloud technology.
This is the first direct contract which Kyndryl has signed with Defra, having previously provided services to run and manage Data Centre Infrastructure and Networking, as part of a much larger, integrated and complex multi-supplier agreement. Defra has appointed Kyndryl under the G-Cloud 13 framework where Kyndryl offers multiple cloud services which are available to UK public sector organisations.
Kyndryl is uniquely placed to deliver these services, drawing on its depth and breadth of network and experience, and providing the practitioner expertise and knowledge together with technologies that help customers prepare for the next wave of cloud adoption with 5G-enabled edge and software-defined networking.
Public sector organisations need to balance cost efficiency with service quality to deliver improved customer experiences and increased positive outcomes. The need to digitally transform, adopt new multi-cloud hybrid infrastructure and platforms is critical for success. As this adoption happens, Kyndryl can advise, build and manage services to help organisations transform whilst providing service security and stability in legacy infrastructure environments as well as connectivity to sustain business continuity.
“Kyndryl is thrilled to sign its first direct contract with Defra to manage and support its core network infrastructure, which is used to host and run critical services in support of Defra’s strategic aims to achieve a cleaner, greener country. This underpins our continued ambition and focus to support the UK’s public sector and to drive better outcomes for citizens,” said John Chambers, Kyndryl United Kingdom & Ireland President.
About Defra – Defra is the government body responsible for improving and protecting the environment. Defra is a ministerial department, supported by 33 agencies and public bodies. Its aim is to grow a green economy and sustain thriving rural communities. Defra also supports the UK’s food, farming and fishing industries.
About Kyndryl – Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, serving thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries. The Company designs, builds, manages and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com
- Referrals to children’s social services by schools have risen by more than 50 per cent in the last eight years
- 129,090 referrals were made by schools in 2022 – the highest number since reporting began in 2014
- New safeguarding software to transform the way local authorities and schools identify and address safeguarding concerns
Market leading safeguarding software company CPOMS has developed a first-of-its-kind solution to transform the way that local authorities work with schools to log and manage safeguarding concerns about children.
 John Wild CPOMS Engage works by allowing local authorities and schools to both use the same system, which provides them with access to dual registered students to receive and request information on specific students via a secured, shared contract.
Different departments within local authorities, including social care, early help and children’s services, schools and virtual schools can input information into one shared system allowing them to build up detailed chronologies relating to a pupil’s wellbeing.
With CPOMS Engage, updates are shared in real-time, eliminating the need for teachers and safeguarding leads to spend time copying and pasting concerns into reports, meaning that more time can be spent focusing on providing children with the support they need.
This method of monitoring, logging and securely sharing even the smallest of concerns will help agencies involved in the care of children to improve the way they communicate, helping to inform joint decision making and co-ordinated interventions that put the safety and wellbeing of children first.
Southway School in Leeds is one of the first schools to pioneer this new software.
Andy Percival, headteacher at Southway School in Leeds, added: “At Southway, we have first-hand experience of some of the challenges around monitoring and sharing safeguarding concerns of children with our local authority partners. We know that effective multi-agency collaboration is key to promoting the wellbeing of children and preventing any child from falling through the gaps.
“CPOMS Engage has already helped us to drastically speed up the way in which we share information with other agencies we work with. It has transformed our ability to work more closely with our partners and ultimately, ensure the children in our care get the support they need in a timely manner.”
John Wild, managing director at CPOMS said: “Schools and local authorities are under more pressure than ever before, and alongside this, the rising number of referrals made to social services highlights that children’s safeguarding continues to be a significant challenge for local authorities.
“It’s therefore vital that processes between local authority departments and schools are as efficient and streamlined as possible – and we’ve worked closely with local authorities and schools to develop a solution that directly addresses the challenges they are facing.
“It’s brilliant to have Southway School in Leeds pioneering this software to address the safeguarding challenges it is facing – and we’re looking forward to seeing more local authorities and schools collaborating in this manner.”
To find out more about how CPOMS Engage can support the secure sharing of safeguarding information across agencies, visit www.cpoms.co.uk/cpoms-engage-for-local-authorities/.
 David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks The public sector continues to promote and undergo digital transformation. The drivers for it range from a need to digitalise operations, to increase innovation and agility or encourage and permit easier collaboration across different Government departments and public sector organisations.
There is also a need for increased data transparency to comply with data protection regulations, to give the public confidence in how their data is used, for what purpose and details of the people using it. There is a claim that digital transformation creates a better organisational culture – a claim which may be disputed by some commentators.
Push for efficiency
With digital transformation comes an increasing amount of data. Spurring it on is the prerequisite for public sector organisations to become more efficient. However, even the UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) finds that His Majesty’s Government has a complex operational landscape.
This is partly due to the existence of legacy IT and ageing data – both of which the NAO considers to be sources of inefficiency, to the extent that they create “a major constraint to improving and modernising government services.” The argument is that poor quality data, legacy systems and networks increase the cost of public sector services.
The NAO adds: “Tackling legacy services is costly and complex, but continuing to use them is risky and commits government to even higher future costs and risks. Failure to modernise legacy systems exposes organisations to possible service disruption, operational failure and cyber-attacks. The increasing costs of maintaining legacy systems and loss of associated specialist skills is unsustainable in the long term.”
The NAO points out that evolution of modern government is considered highly important with an £8bn Spending Review commitment being promised in 2021 to invest in digital, data and technology transformation by 2025. The UK’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at that time, is continuing this commitment as expressed by the current incumbent of 11 Downing Steet, Jeremy Hunt.
AI drive, attainable ambitions
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, recently announced a proposal to help drive artificial intelligence and to boost the UK’s information communications technology industry. Matt Hawkins, CEO and Founder of Cudo – a cloud infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform – believes that the dreams of a Silicon Valley in the UK are achievable. That is certainly possible, and that’s despite the collapse of startup funding Silicon Valley Bank. The UK arm of which has been saved by HSBC for £1.
The Government is offering a proposed £1bn fund to encourage science and technology research. He concurs with the Chancellor that AI and Quantum computing are two exciting areas of focus. In fact, leaps forward have already been made over the last few years, and they will continue into 2023.
Legacy networks and systems
However, legacy networks and systems still exist in the public sector. As with commercial organisations, the solution of choice is to call for the modernisation of public sector network infrastructure – quite often with SD-WANs and with Secure access service edge (SASE). This is based on the view that what is old should be replaced by something modern in order to be efficient. Yes, there may be a need in some organisations to buy new kit – from storage to network infrastructure – but that’s not always the case.
There are, nevertheless, proponents of SD-WANs. Adam Stone writes for StateTech: “For many, SD-WAN — a software-defined approach to managing the network — offers a way forward. A virtual architecture that connects applications and users, it offers simplified management, policy templates and detailed performance reporting.”
“SD-WAN can help lower the cost of hardware, improve routing on the network, enable multicloud access and ensure the security and productivity of the hybrid workforce. It supports the rise of automation and can bolster modernisation efforts, such as identity and access management for citizen services.”
The push to modernise
Stone says government and public sector organisations are looking to modernise legacy technology, simplify network management and they are working to enable a hybrid workforce. His view is that Wide Area Networks have helped over the years, but he claims that conventional approaches have their limitations.
For example, Trent Shoultz, Senior Director of Systems Engineering for State and Local Government and Education at Palo Alto Networks in the US, argues that legacy WANs don’t optimise packet flow. They were never designed to do so, as they were not developed to deliver on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) based on application performance – especially with regard to cloud applications.
With legacy WANs, there has often been the need to manage disparate products manually, “adding significant cost and operational overhead”, he says before adding their lack integrated security, a liability for the modern dispersed enterprise.
Limitations of technologies
There is quite often an unspoken need to consider the limitations of technologies before investing in them, and before implementing them. This is no different when it comes to MPLS, WAN Optimisation and SD-WANs. Government and public sector organisations also need to keep an eye out for technologies that could enable ‘Modern Government Enterprises’ to keep their existing infrastructure going. This can be achieved, and would still be an efficient as well as an effective strategy, without adding the costs of investing in new systems, storage and modern network infrastructure.
Network speed also doesn’t have to be sacrificed, as network performance can be increased by mitigating the effects of latency and packet loss. Rather than focusing on bandwidth, public sector organisations could concentrate on increasing their existing bandwidth utilisation as, quite often, the advertised bandwidth of connectivity often falls short.
David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks, comments: “We find that the SD-WAN providers’ support for traditional data flows is now inadequate for today’s high-speed high-volume transfers, and the SD-WAN world is much larger than these providers.” He, therefore, wonders why so many organisations have turned to SD-WANs, and away from MPLS:
“SD-WANs have the ability to bring into play multiple differing transports and this involves combining them under one virtual WAN to address different WAN requirements”. He finds that SD-WANs can bring into play multiple differing transports, which oftens means that they are united under one virtual WAN to address different WAN requirements.
That said, all organisations – including in the private sector – are often happy to put up with limited network performance. The trouble is that “SD-WANs do not solve the problem of latency and its friend packet loss – both of which have a devastating effect on performance,” explains Trossell. MPLS also still suffers from it, albeit to a lesser extent, and so there is a need for a new approach to optimise bandwidth.
SD-WAN-WAN Acceleration
The answer is to deploy an SD-WAN-WAN Acceleration overlay. This offers the benefits of an SD-WANs, while improving network performance by using AI, machine learning and data parallelisation to mitigate the effects of latency bad packet loss, while boosting bandwidth utilisation. This can be done with a solution such as PORTrockIT, which is data agnostic and capable of sending and receiving encrypted data. Now that’s something that WAN Optimisation can’t do.
WAN Acceleration redacts the arguments that something old is essentially inefficient because PORTrockIT can be used to make existing network infrastructure more efficient without having to throw the baby out of the bathwater. This enables organisations – public sector and otherwise – to do more with less, while helping to keep data secure and by reducing the need for a manual human network and infrastructure management. To put it simply, WAN Acceleration saves time, money and resources. It can also significantly boost the performance of SD-WANs.
By Graham Jarvis, Freelance Business and Technology Journalist
- Moving Communities participation, financial and social value data offered key evidence to unlock new £63 million fund for leisure centres with pools
- Data shows pool usage highest among older adults, women and under 16s and contributed to more than £833 million in social value in 2022 – 85% of the total for the sector
Data from Sport England’s Moving Communities platform has provided key evidence in a recent decision to make a major new £63 million fund available to publicly-owned leisure centres with swimming pools. Critical to the decision was data that modelled the rising expenditures across the leisure sector, positioned alongside the potential loss in participation and social value.
Moving Communities is a Sport England driven initiative delivered by 4GLOBAL and a group of consortium members; Leisure-Net, Right Directions, and Sheffield Hallam University. Together, Moving Communities provides live data based on the largest data set ever gathered for the local authority leisure sector.
According to data from Moving Communities, between April and August 2019, the average utilities cost per site was £46,240. For the same period in 2022, the sector was facing a 70% increase with average costs rising to £78,442. For large facilities, there was an 82% increase from £60,542 to £110,469.
These results show the challenges being faced by the more than 2,000 public leisure centres in England, over 800 of which have pools. These facilities play a vital role in helping communities engage with sport and physical activity.
 Tim Hollingsworth OBE,
Chief Executive Tim Hollingsworth, Chief Executive Officer, Sport England added:
“We know the rising cost of energy, along with chemical shortages and staff retention have created a challenging landscape for the public leisure sector. We’ve been able to track this in real time through our Moving Communities service, alongside participation data across different activities to understand the wider social value generated from activity in these vital community facilities. Efforts from local authorities and their service providers in sharing this data have been integral to the funding decision and created a positive step change that can continue to show the impact of these centres moving forward.”
Data from Moving Communities showed that facilities containing both gyms and pools were estimated to create more than £833 million in social value in 2022 – 85% of the total generated for the sector. Social value combines data from several outcomes including the total savings in health and social care costs achieved through the reduced risk of various health conditions as well as the average annual costs per person diagnosed with the condition. It also includes improved educational attainment through sports participation, savings to the criminal justice system and the value of higher wellbeing derived by sports participants.
What’s more, over half of all leisure centre participants went swimming in 2022. Including both activities and lessons, this equates to more than 4.5 million people, which is more than any other leisure activity recorded by the platform. Of those swimming, there was a higher proportion of older, female adults participating, and over the course of 2022, 1.1 million people participated in swimming lessons. The vast majority (95%) of swimming lesson participants were under 16.
“The pandemic left the public leisure market in a vulnerable position after almost two years of closures and restrictions,” said Emma Bernstein, Strategic Project Lead for Sport England. “The new funding being made available to help these vital community resources through the financial pressures they face is a great start to support the sector as it moves toward a more sustainable operating model in future.”
“The hardest to reach demographics are the ones using pools the most,” continued Emma. “Continuing to ensure public access to swimming facilities is incredibly important to reduce inequalities in our communities especially for the larger proportion of older adults, women and young children who regularly use these spaces to stay fit and healthy. The data is clear. Pools play a vital role in communities, supporting hundreds of thousands of people each week.”
For more information about Moving Communities, go to www.sportengland.org/research-and-data/data/moving-communities
Following the announcement that the Household Support Fund has been extended again, Huggg, the specialist platform which allows organisations to send and manage retail vouchers at scale to those in need, has launched a number of new initiatives. These are designed to help local authorities and their Third Party partner organisations (TPOs) get these vital funds quickly and efficiently to recipients with vouchers to pay for groceries, clothing, essential household items and free school meals
This move acknowledges that whilst councils in England are best placed to decide how to spend their allocation to support people in their local area drawing from local knowledge and direct contact with people in the community, they often struggle with the additional workload. This includes mandatory marketing, detailed DWP compliant reporting and provision of redemption data.
 To provide further support on this, Huggg has created a guide to Delivering HSF with Impact, which includes templates such as delivery plans, working with TPOs, MI templates, as well as marketing plans, guidance and content for messaging that can be used across all media and social media platforms. For those councils that are using TPOs such as charities, housing associations and CAB to help administer the funds, the Huggg platform will also support with full transparency of how they are using the funds and links with reporting/controls.
Stefan Allsebrook at Huggg said: “The role of distributing the HSF funds is often given to hard pushed teams that have a heavy workload already and our platform enables them to work at scale and allow and distribute thousands of vouchers quickly and easily with built in reporting and redemption data. These new initiatives are designed to help further reduce time spent on planning and marketing the schemes and ensure that the funds are distributed quickly and efficiently.”
The Huggg platform is free of charge to public authorities and charitable organisations and enables them to send groceries, clothing and/or home essentials vouchers to recipients across the community. Each recipient can decide which retailer they will spend their voucher with, giving them the power and the dignity of choice. Huggg also provides 7 day a week support to both its client organisations and recipients.
 Julian Panter The number of active social care work placements have reached an all-time high, with average pay rates on the rise in an effort from businesses and councils to attract more candidates into vital roles, according to data from market-leading workforce technology and services platform Matrix.
Despite the rising need for social workers, data from the Department of Education showed that social workers are quitting in record numbers, with 5,400 leaving the profession in 2022, a 9% rise on the previous year – the highest since 2017. It showed that vacancies were also at a record high of 7,900 (+21% over 2021).
Matrix’s own internal data correlates to this trend, highlighting a 87% rise in new placements created between 2015 and 2022 and an 84% increase in active placements since 2017.
Among its top 4 social care clients, Matrix data shows an average 179% increase in the number of social care roles available since 2020, with councils responding to the social care crisis by offering a significant 20% increase in pay rates to attract more candidates to the roles.
Although pay rises in the sector are welcomed the London Councils collaboration is aiming to end bidding wars over children’s social worker pay and are collaborating more than ever before to avoid the rising costs of expensive agency staff. Boroughs say their unprecedented level of collaboration is reducing competition between one another over children’s social care staff. With boroughs also working more closely with agency suppliers of social workers, children’s services departments report they have better control of costs, as well as upholding high standards through more information sharing on references and improving retention rates.
“With social care workers quitting in record numbers, it’s vital that employers are not just working to improve conditions but also the rates of pay to help close this gap and attract and retain more candidates to take up these vital roles. Our association with the London Pledge and other associated Memorandums across the UK is integral to keep the various customers talking so as not to hike up rates unnecessarily.” says Julian Panter at Matrix.
In February this year, the government published a plan to overhaul the social care system – including “ambitious plans” to recruit up to 500 new child and family social worker apprentices and introduce more support and professional development for social workers in the first five years of their career.
 Barley Laing, UK Managing Director at Melissa With precious budgets under significant pressure due to high inflation and belt-tightening post-pandemic, it has never been more important to ensure funds are efficiently spent.
One important way is to gain insight, a single citizen view (SCV), of those on your database. This will facilitate the personalisation of communications and improve the delivery of services – which will have a positive impact on the user experience – along with improving operational efficiency. Also, obtaining a SCV will help to reduce the opportunity for fraud.
A major challenge to obtaining a SCV is data decay. Contact data degrades at 25 per cent a year without regular intervention, as people move home, get married, for example. An additional issue when it comes to collecting contact data at the user onboarding stage is that 20 per cent of addresses entered online contain errors. Spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers and incorrect postcodes are primarily caused by people mistyping their details into small keyboards on their mobile devices.
With simple and cost-effective changes as part of your data quality regime, incorrect contact data can be easily fixed to help deliver a SCV.
Cleansing and standardising held user data to deliver data quality in batch, as well as when new data is collected in real-time, is important. Furthermore, data can be enhanced by using cleansing tools that can fill in any missing contact details.
Autocomplete prevents inaccuracies at onboarding
Technology, such as address autocomplete or lookup, are vital in ensuring public sector organisations gather accurate address data in real-time at the onboarding stage by providing a properly formatted, correct address when the user starts to input theirs. By reducing the number of keystrokes required, by up to 81 per cent when typing an address, it also enables convenience. The onboarding process is speeded up, reducing the probability of the user not completing an application to access a service.
It’s not only about the address. The first point of contact verification can be extended to email and phone so that these valuable contact data channels can also be verified in real-time. This ensures organisations have the ability to communicate effectively with users, not just on the first occasion, but on an ongoing basis, and support the delivery of a SCV.
Match and dedupe
With the average database containing 8 – 10 per cent duplicate records, it’s a necessity to undertake data deduplication. Duplicate records are frequently caused when two departments merge their data and mistakes in contact data collection occur at different touchpoints.
Unfortunately, it can add cost in terms of time and money, particularly with printed communications, the delivery of which can also negatively impact on the sender’s reputation. Receiving more than one of the same communication will be viewed by many as an excess waste of public money by recipients, particularly at a difficult time for public sector finances.
To avoid such waste it’s important to utilise an advanced fuzzy matching tool to deduplicate data. It can merge and purge the most challenging records, making it possible to create a ‘single user record’ and obtain an optimum SCV. This will also maximise efficiency and cost reduction for those in the public sector because multiple outreach efforts will not be made to the same person. Another key benefit is the potential for fraud is reduced due to the creation of a unified record for each citizen.
Enrichment
The data cleaning tools sourced should be able to fill in any gaps in the contact data, for example, a missing telephone number, as well as correct them where required, which in turn will improve personalisation. This additional, accurate data will also aid those in the public sector to make learnings about their citizens, to further improve communications and their experience.
SaaS supercharges data quality efforts
It has never been easier or more cost-effective to deliver data quality in real-time. Today, you can access a scalable data cleaning software as a service (SaaS) platform that requires no code, integration or training. All that’s required is to plug in and benefit immediately. It’s technology that instantly cleanses and corrects names, addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers worldwide. Records are matched in real-time, ensuring no duplication, and data profiling is delivered to help identify issues for further action. A single, intuitive interface provides tools for data standardisation, validation, and enrichment, resulting in high-quality contact information across multiple databases that will help to deliver a SCV.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Once public sector organisations have obtained accurate customer data, artificial intelligence (AI) can add significant value to the data they hold. For example, a type of machine learning called semantic technology can promptly deliver high value, in-depth intelligence on the users of your services, and therefore enhance your SCV. Semantic technology, or semtech, associates words with meanings and recognises the relationships between them. It works by delivering powerful real-time connections between records, combining the missing pieces of data to support an informed decision about the content of a communication to a user.
Prioritising the delivery of a SCV at a time when their budgets are under huge pressure is vital for those in the public sector. Obtaining and maintaining contact data quality is at the heart of this. Once you have data quality communications can be personalised, improvements can be made to the provision of services, and a standout user experience delivered. Additionally, public bodies will experience greater operational efficiencies and the opportunity for costly fraud will be reduced.
For more information about Melissa and how our data quality and identity verification services can help you, please visit: www.melissa.com/uk, email: barley.laing@melissa.com or call: 020 7718 0070.
The NHS is looking for a new chief information officer, and the Highland Marketing advisory board has been considering what should be on his or her ‘to do’ list.
Following the merger of NHSX and NHS Digital with the NHS England transformation directorate, and the departure of some high-profile digital leaders, the NHS is looking for a new chief information officer.
In the middle of March, NHS England announced that it had appointed John Quinn, the former head of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority, as interim NHS CIO. But there’s no indication when a permanent replacement for Simon Bolton will be found.
The uncertainty has contributed to health tech being – as one member of the Highland Marketing advisory board put it – “in a bit of a mess right now.” Against a paralysing backdrop of elective recovery, demand, financial pressure and strikes, providers and suppliers are trying to work out what the IT strategy is meant to be – and where the resources are going to come from.
As Andy Kinnear, a former CSU CIO who now works for Ethical Healthcare Consulting, put it: “We’re trapped between two worlds. We’ve got this exciting new world of digital that we see in other areas of our lives. And we’ve got this stale, old world of patching critical infrastructure and running after programmes that are run by people who feel a long way from the frontline.”
Quinn, and the new CIO when they are appointed, will have a lot on their desks, and the advisory board highlighted five of their biggest challenges as being to:
Reboot frontline digitisation: The frontline digitisation programme has been billed as an opportunity to complete the roll-out of electronic patient records to hospitals that was started 20 years ago by the National Programme for IT, while encouraging ‘convergence’ on infrastructure and core systems.
However, the Health Service Journal has reported that more than half of the £2.2 billion that was found for the programme in last year’s Autumn Statement has been clawed-back. And there is concern that, in some areas at least, the focus on convergence is skewing priorities in the direction of clusters of trusts adopting the same EPR from a single supplier.
Ian Hogan, chief information officer at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, said: “NHS England is saying there are about 30 trusts without an EPR but, due to the reduced funding envelope, it looks as if not all will be funded for one. Where does that leave the rest?
“And if we can’t support 30 trusts to get an EPR, how can we support the other trusts to converge on one or two systems? You can make a case for convergence being the right thing to do, but at the moment it is just causing more confusion.”
Pick a future for the NHS App: The NHS has made a considerable investment in the NHS App but has seemed uncertain about what to do with it. Should its developers create their own information and transactional functionality? Or should they focus on providing identity and access services for third-parties?
 Or should the NHS let the app become one of many digital access points? The current health and social care secretary, Steve Barclay, seems keen to see the app widely downloaded and used as a ‘digital front door’ to the NHS; and advisory board members thought he should push on.
Neil Perry, a digital health consultant who was, until recently, the director of digital transformation at Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust, said: “The NHS App had something like 30 million downloads during Covid, so there is clearly an opportunity to build on that. And it should be a digital front door, ideally a nationally provided patient portal, from which the economies of scale would drive down cost and create standardisation. But more than a patient portal, key apps should be integrated and funded nationally, such as AI assisted diagnosis & symptom checkers that can reduce the overall burden on GPs, UTCs and emergency departments. All this would democratise patient facing tech across the UK.”
Advisory board chair Jeremy Nettle is passionate about this agenda. “I remember thinking, years ago, when we first heard that the ‘information revolution was coming’, that it was more likely to come from the public than the NHS,” he said.
“To some extent, that is happening, with the spread of GP apps and remote monitoring. But we need it to happen faster, because so many people are still ending up in hospital when they could be better treated elsewhere or staying in hospital when they could recover at home.”
Secure the med tech revolution: Medical technology is a hot topic. The government has just published the first-ever strategy to give UK patients access to safe, effective and innovative equipment ranging from syringes to medical scanners and from test kits to home dialysis machines.
Many of these devices will be connected to NHS networks or the public internet in one way or another, and Neil Perry argued there is an urgent need to think about how to regulate and secure them. “The med tech space is really important, but it is a hotch-potch at the moment,” he said. “There’s no consistent adoption, and the NHS needs to invest in making sure these devices are connected, data insights utilised and are made fit for purpose. This can really improve safety, efficiency, and effectiveness, reducing communication errors, increasing accuracy, and enabling faster diagnosis and escalation. I’d argue investing in a med tech Strategy or ‘smart hospitals’ would have a greater impact rather than refreshing a PAS and/or an EPR.”
Stop the talent drain: National leadership for NHS IT has been in flux since the merger of NHSX and NHS Digital was announced. But Andy Kinnear pointed out there have also been some high profile departures from integrated care boards and trusts.
 Highland Marketing advisory board At the same time, the NHS continues to lack the workforce and IT strategies that might help it to secure the digitally savvy clinicians, IT innovators and data analysts it will need in the future. Ian Hogan said: “This is one of the things that keeps me awake at night – alongside the old data centres, and the cyber security.
“The health service has had a cadre of IT leaders who are NHS through and through – I am probably one of them. But there’s fewer and fewer of us. Even when we recruit people, they do the job for a bit and then go somewhere else. It’s not just the money, or the hours, or the complexity. It’s the workload. You do 100-hour weeks to try and stay on top of it, and it’s just not sustainable.”
Reconnect with the frontline: This leads to the question of who the next, substantive NHS CIO should be. In some ways – the board argued – it might not matter. The present government will, almost certainly, be out of office within a couple of years. NHS England looks as if it will spend a good chunk of that time re-organising to cut costs and headcount.
Most of the national capital funding for NHS IT has been earmarked for frontline digitisation and then cut, so only small sums may be available for projects. Probably those that catch ministerial attention, like digital follow-up, or virtual wards, or bed management and patient flow systems – which are suddenly ‘the ‘solution’ for next winter.
As Andy Kinnear put it: “The political forces may be so huge that whoever takes on the job will have virtually no room for manoeuvre.” Even so, members felt it would help if the NHS could find a CIO with frontline experience.
“I think we need somebody who has been at the coalface; somebody who has a proper connection with what it is like to do the job in an acute environment,” said Ian Hogan. “Because it is just tortuous at the moment, and we need somebody who can bring a bit of realism to what is being demanded by the centre and what is possible.”
Pulling IT all together
The advisory board was divided on whether the merger of NHS England, NHSX, and NHS Digital will be a good thing in the end. Cindy Fedell argued it would be because “we do need IT to be blended with operations” and also “when NHS England says something, chief executives sit up and take note.”
However, entrepreneur Ravi Kumar reiterated that, for the moment: “It feels like the whole digital agenda is on hold. Plans are announced, but nobody backs them up. And the leadership has gone, so nobody fights for that money. Instead, it feels like a culture of survival has taken hold.”
Andy Kinnear argued that while the hiatus continues, the best thing ICB and trust CIOs can do is “crack on” and “use the space to do things locally” – although he wondered where innovation would come from, with SMEs and start-ups finding it so hard to get a toehold in the market and at risk of take-over by bigger players.
Looping back to his opening point, he said: “There is the fourth industrial revolution going on around the NHS, and there is the moribund state of things within it. For me, what the new CIO needs to do most is to provide challenge about that, and to work out a way to get from one world to another.
“They need to start by acknowledging that the past five years have achieved very little, and they need to engage regional and local leaders to be part of the way forward.”
 An impressive 500,000 energy vouchers dispatched within four weeks and ahead of schedule.
A staggering £600m of cash distributed across post offices at speed, meticulous behind-the-scenes planning and postmasters who proved to be local heroes for their communities.
The results speak for themselves: With a redemption rate of almost 100%, it’s clear the Northern Ireland £600 Energy Bill Support Scheme’s (EBSS) voucher rollout has been a resounding success for Post Office.
The campaign has been championed by the now Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) and by Christopher Heaton-Harris, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
He chose to publicly praise the rollout on Twitter, posting “Great news for Northern Ireland households. Thanks to @Post Office and NI energy suppliers for their efforts in the quick delivery of this vital support.’’
So, what next for Post Office and its network of 11,500 branches across the UK?
Having ensured over £1 billion in cash payments, issued on behalf of the Government made its way into people’s hands in the last year alone, it appears one of Britain’s best-loved organisations has its sights firmly set on ‘owning’ the bill payments and cash disbursal space.
Behind the scenes of the NI energy voucher rollout & its success:
The Government’s (EBSS) rollout for Northern Ireland was agreed and completed within two months – a fantastic feat for Post Office.
However, up until the 11th hour, the Post Office found itself vying with PayPoint to be awarded the contract in the first place.
 Simon Lambert As Simon Lambert, Commercial Director of Payzone at the Post Office, explains: “We were approached by the now Department for Energy Security & Net Zero as a contender to oversee the Northern Ireland rollout around the middle of December. It was clear that there were two viable channels for the scheme.
“Customers in Northern Ireland have a higher cash centric approach to the energy market: around 75 per cent pay for their fuel with money or prepaid key and card, rather than direct debit. An energy redemption rollout would mean these customers would need cash-in-hand.
“This worked to the advantage of the Post Office as our ability to manage cash pay in and pay outs is unparalleled and we were very much in the frame because of our consistent delivery on other redemption rollouts. The evidence was clear: the Post Office is trusted to deliver, and the quality of the customer care provided by the postmasters is very much on the front foot.”
The scale of the cash payouts the Post Office potentially faced was huge: at least £300 million was the estimate once they factored every single customer wanting their voucher to be redeemed for cash. The amount distributed to post offices across Northern Ireland was then doubled to £600m ensure there would be no shortage of cash for customers.
This required working with police to help move the cash and ensure all post offices were prepared and had enough funds to pay out over a four-to-five-week period.
The Post Office worked with the Bank of Ireland and G4S and plans were also put in place for police officers to increase their presence outside or near post offices and pop in regularly to ensure postmasters and customers felt safe.
The enviable achievement in Northern Ireland is just the tip of a long line of impressive cash redemption projects.
The last decade has seen the Post Office occupy an increasingly larger share of the cash disbursal and bill payment space through a combination of need and demand. 
In the last 12 months alone, the Post Office Network has paid out cash where needed for some 2,000,000 local authority hardship funds, disability allowances, school meal vouchers, council tax rebates and as many as 10 million energy top ups.
Said Simon: “The Post Office is probably the only network that can enable these kinds of payments above the £50 cash level. It’s the last man standing in that sort of cash space and is also uniquely placed: there will be a post office within a one mile to five-mile radius of 99% of the population. It means the Post Office is perfectly placed to take charge of the cash disbursal and bill payment space.”
Logistics and infrastructure aside, it is heart, community and heritage that sit at the core of the Post Office.
For the customers who walk into a post office, it is the postmasters and those behind the counter who embody those traits. They are the local heroes of their communities.
Simon continues: “Post offices are still integral to the heart of a community and customers know that when they walk into their local branch, they will get the customer service they need and help to process a transaction in store. There is also a legacy and proven track record to the Post Office, we’ve worked with energy companies for years, they know us and trust us, and those relationships have been built over decades and are key. When it came to the EBSS NI rollout, the energy companies were on our side from the start and made it clear they were happy to work with us and supported the role the Post Office played. Cash redemption rollouts are not just about processes. The people involved and the relationships that have been established also matter.
“I can see a really strong role for the Post Office to continue working with our partners by giving them a unique helping hand to reach and support communities where others cannot. With banks increasingly closing branches, people have and will continue to become reliant on their local post office for paying their bills and receiving cash pay outs.”
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Market-leading workforce technology and services platform Matrix is providing funding for a new adult education course aimed at helping young people successfully transition out of the childcare system. Certified as City and Guilds Level 5, the Young Adults Skills Development Care Leavers’ Programme has been launched by business performance consultancy Ayming, in partnership with the London Borough of Islington and The Arsenal Foundation, the charitable arm of Arsenal Football Club.
Ward speaks from experience, having had to adjust to life outside the professional sports ‘bubble’ after his burgeoning football career as a goalkeeper ended prematurely. Fellow former athlete and England netball captain Serena Guthrie MBE is also leading the initiative with Ward.
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