Agenda item

Members were provided with a presentation from the ICT Strategist on the background to the Council’s Hillingdon First Card scheme, which was this Committee’s second major review. The aim of the review would be to review the operation and function of the Hillingdon First Card and to look at other possible enhancements / additions to the successful card.

The Committee noted that any proposals which arose out of the review would have to be cost neutral to the Council and involve no extra costs to the administration of the card itself.

Areas covered in the presentation included:

The Purpose of the Card and why was it introduced?

·        Hillingdon First Card offered residents preferential rates at Council parking and leisure facilities, access to libraries and the Council’s waste centre and discounts at participating local businesses (over 335 outlets around the Borough)

·        Cards were available to all Hillingdon Residents who were aged 18 and over, although drivers who were 17 years old could also request a card

·        The Card was the most extensive multi-application local authority smart card in the UK

·        The Card was introduced to give resident’s satisfaction and a sense of belonging with the local community. To give privileged rates to local residents for parking and leisure services. To help promote local businesses during a difficult economic time. To promote ‘well being’ through increases in leisure facility and library usage. To modernise and improve access to Council services 

·        The tag line for the cards was ‘First for residents, first for businesses, first for Hillingdon

How does the scheme operate?

·           The card was a MiFare 4K Classic contact-less multi-application smartcard which had a small chip, segregated into pre-defined sections or ‘applications’. 

·           The card chip contained data in each section that allowed access to a service. For example the parking section application communicates with the parking machine, via the card reader, to authenticate access to the tariff.

·           The cards were encoded to a Local Authority Smartcard Standards e-Organisation profile  which meant it was inter-operable with other Local Authority cards

·           Overall scheme management was carried out using the ONYX Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This system had an interface with the library system and dedicated card management system.

·           Requests for new cards, replacement cards and to cancel cards were carried out via the CRM. This could be done by residents online themselves, through the contact centre by phone or when visiting a library.

·           There was also a dedicated Card Management System called Smart Connect that issued the card numbers, card history, stored the encoding data and processed the ‘hot-list’ of cards reported lost/stolen.

·           Other systems linked to the Card Management System and involved in the scheme were the leisure management system and the parking management system.

Implementation of the Scheme

·          The merging of Council Tax and Library records created an initial data set of 143,000 residents

·          Advice had been given that the use of the full electoral register would breach the data protection act because most residents had opted not to allow the use of their information and details to be used for any other purpose

·          Existing library membership number was switched by overnight interface on the library system to coincide with the delivery of the Card. This ensured the Cards would be recognised when presented at libraries

·          The Council’s card management system had a hot list of stolen / lost / cancelled cards that it communicated to the parking system which was communicated to each parking machine daily

·          When a Card was used for a parking transaction, the place, date and time of its last use was written back to the Card to prevent more than one customer using it

Card Usage

·          130,800 residents had presented their Hillingdon First Card to a card reader which represented two thirds of the adult population of the Borough

·          3,463,000 times a Card had been used for preferential parking rates at Council car parks

·          785,000 times a Card had been used in a library

·          154,000 times a Card had been used as a leisure card since April 2010

·          255,000 times a Card had been used to access civic amenity site

Outcomes and Benefits to the Council

·          Local branding and sense of local identity

·          Increased parking revenue (increase in usage among non-cardholders as well)

·          Free Christmas Parking in Uxbridge for Card Holders     (flexibility)

·          Efficiencies through combining existing card schemes (Library + Leisure)

·          Reduction in landfill waste 

·          Modernising access to Council services

·          Solar powered parking equipment

·          Improved quality of data for the Council’s customer relationship management

·          Scheme designed for resident self service online – low annual cost to run with few resources

·          Supporting local businesses during difficult economic times

·          Directory of 335 local business contacts that the Council could access

·          Infrastructure in place to add more Council services and applications at low cost

Discussion took place on the draft scoping report of the review and possible areas which the review could look into. The Committee acknowledged that the Hillingdon First Card was introduced for Hillingdon residents and therefore there would not be scope for extending the Card to employees of those businesses in the Borough who were not residents of the Borough.

The Committee was provided with details of the publicity which was involved in the promotion of the Card to residents and to those local businesses who were involved in the discount scheme. This was an area which Members agreed should be focused on.

Reference was made to the businesses which were part of the scheme and a general discussion took place on the benefits to both residents and local businesses to expanding business involvement in the scheme. A previous review by the Committee which looked at business support on the Borough’s Industrial Estates broached the subject of business to business support and the possibility of this generating more business to local businesses.

Other areas of interest that Members raised included looking at Insurance, car breakdown services, driving instructors, estate agents and whether any aspects of the Hillingdon First Card could be applied to these areas.

Members were informed that these areas could be explored with a representative from Drek Associates, who were commissioned to recruit business members to the scheme.

Reference was made to the success of the Card in relation to residents’ use in Council car parks and whether Brown Badge users could be worked into the scheme.

For the next meeting of the Committee Members asked for a print out of the Hillingdon First webpages.

     RESOLVED -

1.        That the information presented be noted and the draft scoping report be updated to reflect discussions.

 2.  That a representative from Drek Associates and the Head of Corporate Communications within the Council be invited to the next witness session of the review.