1 Executive Summary

Background and context

1.1 The Rights of Way (RoW) service manages and maintains a public rights of way network of 4,573 km across the County of Hampshire. It has a high political profile as a key area that the local community use, enjoy and report on.

1.2 The RoW service operates on a basis of six area teams with an Area RoW Officer and a two man in-house maintenance team, who undertake the practical work on the ground (Appendix 1 sets out the organisation structure for RoW).

1.3 RoW is a statutory function operating primarily under section 130 of the Highways Act 1980. This requires the service to "assert and protect" the RoW for public use and enjoyment, incorporating maintenance of the network, and enforcement of its proper use and access; along with improvement and development to enhance the network for the public.

1.4 The following key issues represent the core drivers for this review:

· increasing volumes of fault reports across the network

· rising public expectations regarding the level of maintenance and speed of response

· inadequate communications regarding progress of fault reports that appear to fall into a "black hole" from the public's perspective

· the service does not have the capacity to resolve the volume of fault reports on the network.

1.5 The focus of this review is therefore on the fault reporting and resolution process, from the first point of contact by the public to the point at which the fault has been completed by the maintenance team on the ground and the fault report case closed.

Current way of working

1.6 The RoW service was in the first tranche of services to move to the new corporate Contact Centre, Hantsdirect, during 2007. RoW represents 0.51% of the phone call volume within Hantsdirect. It therefore represents a small, but complex, service within the Contact Centre. Roughly a third of the public contacts for the service are by telephone, with the remainder received in email form.

1.7 Hantsdirect are able to handle only 9%¹ of all public contacts without the need for them to be passed through to the RoW service due to the largely reactive way the service operates - 70% of the public contacts are fault reports to be addressed by the area office.

1.8 Fault reports are prioritised (on a scale of 1 to 5) when they are received by the area office. Largely the service is only able to attend to priorities 1 and 2.

1.9 86% of the outstanding caseload² (at November 2008) related to priorities 3 to 5. Some priority 3 cases will get addressed if the maintenance team are in the area addressing higher priorities, but the majority are unlikely to get addressed for some considerable time, if at all. Of the 2,659 cases recorded 59% were greater than six months old, with 25% of these greater than one year old.

1.10 The service is highly paper based, with very limited IT functionality and inconsistent processes in area offices. No RoW IT management system is in place which means no easily accessible management information is available on the throughput or outstanding caseload by age. The lack of management information compromises the ability of the service to make the most effective use of the available resources (people and money).

1.11 Best practice research was undertaken, with other local authorities, to inform the review. This showed that there was no one size fits all model. They were all organised on an area basis, and most had an IT system in place and used contractors to deliver the practical work on the ground. Most responded to faults in a reactive way, with one authority delivering a successful proactive inspection and maintenance programme across the whole network, which is also consistent with the requirements for highway maintenance (road network).

Issues

1.12 The review of current working practices has highlighted a range of issues which centre, in the main, on the need to innovate the current fault reporting and resolution process in order to:

· Organise the service in a way that maximises capacity by enabling staff to effectively manage the volume of work at the same time as public expectations

· Improves communications with the public and Hantsdirect, and the provision of readily available management information by maximising the effective use of IT

· Adopt ways of working that support avoidable contact with the public (new national indicator 14)

· Increases transparency, develops consistent processes and procedures with defined performance standards

· Promotes further partnership and multi-agency working.

1.13 As stated by the IPROW it is usual for there to be a backlog of maintenance work on public rights of way, the key is how this is managed to not overburden RoW staff and to manage the increasing expectations of the public.

The future way of working for RoW

1.14 Based on fundamental service delivery assumptions and a range of key high level process design principles, developed and agreed with the project team, a future state RoW fault reporting and resolution business process has been designed to address the identified issues. There are three key strands:

A. Improving the internal process and the customer experience through developments to Hantsdirect/Lagan to eliminate duplicate data entry and improve the process flow (Tables 6, section 6.7, and Table 8, section 7.5 refer).

B. The implementation of a comprehensive RoW IT system that allows the service to effectively and simply report on performance to manage the day to day RoW operation (section 7.6 refers).

C. Development and implementation of a proactive inspection and maintenance programme across the whole network parish by parish, underpinned by a separate summer vegetation clearance programme, to increase transparency, communication, partnership and multi-agency (working with Parish Councils, Landowners and user groups) and staff morale (section 7.7 refers). A pilot is proposed to test the model and evaluate how this could best operate within Hampshire prior to implementing it in full.

1.15 A briefing paper, containing a summary of this review and the recommendations, was taken to the Hampshire Countryside Access Forum on 11 February 2009 to determine their views on the proposals. The recommendations were enthusiastically supported, with particular reference to the need for an IT system, improved feedback, managing expectations, working more with volunteers within appropriate health and safety requirements and support for the proactive approach.

Benefits and dependencies

1.16 The principle benefits are:

· A clear and defined business process from end to end with consistent processes and procedures across the County based on a proactive programme of inspection and maintenance

· Improved perception by the public of the RoW service, resulting from the changed approach and increased transparency through publishing more information and making it readily available for Hantsdirect and avoiding the number of contacts from the public and thereby reducing the cost of maintenance

· Readily available management and performance information to enable the service to make the most effective use of existing resources

· A defined direction of travel for staff within the service that helps them to not feel overburdened, retain commitment and morale and manage the service, whilst harnessing partnership and multi-agency working to improve the perception of the service and manage the many expectations and demands from the public

· Ability to improve communications with the public and Hantsdirect, more effectively manage the many public expectations and have clear and published service standards.

1.17 A number of dependencies have been identified that are required to ensure the successful introduction of the three proposals (paragraph 6.8 refers). Key amongst these are the need for a clear culture change strategy and the affordability of the technology based proposals

1.18 A range of implementation tasks have been identified that will be required to ensure a successful transition to the new way of working for the RoW service (paragraph 6.10 refers).

Costs

1.19 Summary costs for the proposals are as follows:

1.19.1 Improving the internal business process and customer experience:

· Hantsdirect/Lagan requirements are yet to be costed. This will be undertaken in June 2009 when a Senior Analyst in IT Services (Hantsdirect) will be available to consider the proposals as a whole (Section 7.5, Table 8 and Appendix 7 refer).

· Commissioning a culture change specialist to provide advise and support in developing a clear change management strategy and working with the staff to help ensure a successful transition to the new way of working. This has not been costed, but Hampshire Learning Centre, for example, charge a rate of £530 per day (2008/09 rates)

· The development and implementation of performance standards and a best practice toolkit for the RoW service can be developed as part of their ongoing day to day workload and as such has no cost impact.

1.19.2 A comprehensive RoW IT system:

· IT Services will be required to undertake an appraisal of the most appropriate system solution for the service. The cost of this is not known at this time and is subject to terms and requirements being agreed with RoW.

· Indicative IT system costs based on CAMs, the only dedicated RoW IT system on the market (one of four potential system options), the costs could be:

· Indicative system set up and implementation costs of £133,950. This includes IT Services estimated costs, and the cost of developing the Lagan interface

· IT system ongoing annual revenue IT costs of £22,800.

1.19.3 Proactive inspection and maintenance programme, underpinned by a summer vegetation clearance contract:

· It is anticipated that the introduction of a proactive inspection and maintenance programme, based on 7 Area RoW Officers spending 40% of their time operating an inspection programme on a rolling 15 months basis, would have no additional cost implications, beyond the staff time to develop and implement the 15 month model.

· If the service wishes to implement a 9 month cycle this would have additional resource implications of either £100,000 or £200,000 depending on 50% or 40% of a RoW Officer time spent undertaking the inspections on the network (Section 7.7, Table 10 and Appendix 9 refer).

· One pilot is proposed currently which it is anticipated could be met from within existing resources. Further pilots to test the proactive model in full may have a cost impact. The cost of a summer vegetation clearance contract, as a potential pilot, has not been market tested. A rough estimate shows that the vegetation contract could be in the region of £60,000, based on priority routes, but this has not been tested

Timescales for the recommendations

1.20 Short term, within the next 12 to 18 months, the proposals centre around the improvements in the internal processes and customer experience, along with undertaking pilots to test the proposed proactive inspection and maintenance programme. It is anticipated that these can be met within existing resources.

1.21 The implementation of a comprehensive Rights of Way IT management system will require new investment, along with the Hantsdirect/Lagan requirements. It is anticipated that the earliest implementation date would be April 2010. This is dependent on the recommendation from the systems appraisal and analysis of Hantsdirect/Lagan requirements, during the summer of 2009 if approved, and how much they will cost.

1.22 Longer term change within 2 - 6 years: The service will be working towards a move to a proactive, not reactive, approach underpinned by a summer vegetation clearance programme based on priority routes.

Conclusion

1.23 This report proposes a significant level of change for the RoW service over the forthcoming few years, which was enthusiastically supported by the Hampshire Countryside Access Forum in February 2009. A clear strategy, working with culture change specialists, will be required to ensure the successful transition to the new way of working. In addition, some of the key proposals around the IT system and Hantsdirect/Lagan requirements need to be evaluated for feasibility and cost to determine if they are affordable for the RoW service and Recreation and Heritage department within the current economic and financial climate.

1.24 In implementing the proposed changes from this BPI review of the fault reporting and resolution process, it is suggested that the service could significantly improve its service delivery, demonstrate increased value for money and achieve the agreed vision of the project team and the Director of Recreation and Heritage by:

"Offering a countywide Rights of Way fault reporting and resolution service to a agreed set of performance standards thereby delivering a high level of customer satisfaction".