Lockdown reflections - staff stories - William Moore

Name: William Moore

Age: 37

From: Alexandria

Job title: Revenues and Benefits Manager

OIC service: August 2019

Duties: I manage the teams responsible for billing and collecting Council Tax, Business Rates, and Council rents, and awarding welfare benefits and grants.

How did work change during lockdowns? I had to put in place a lot of new processes to allow some staff to work from home and we had to have social distancing in the revenues office as we still needed staff in to answer the phones. As we closed the building to the public we had to look at new ways of doing things, for example, for some grants a member of the public would previously have come in to the cash office to collect money but we had to set up immediate bank payments instead.

We had a big increase in the number of applications for benefits and we did a lot of work to make it easier to claim by setting up online claim forms, accepting letters and forms by e-mail etc and we’re now doing all this as standard with new grant schemes like the self-isolation grants, so in a way the pandemic forced us to modernise the service a bit.

When the first lockdown started we were right in the middle of our processing for the end of the financial year, to get the bills out etc which is always our busiest time of year, and we were asked to administer the business support grant scheme starting in March. This was a lot of work and I had 3 months of working nights and weekends, first to set up processes to run the scheme and then dealing with the applications and following up appeals from businesses who had been unsuccessful. All of the staff in the Revenues team spent a lot of time dealing with this, some worked nights and weekends dealing with the applications, others just with the phones ringing off the hook in the office every day.

The Revenues Team processed 973 applications and paid out £8.32M in grants to 793 local businesses during that initial period and with the addition of the grants administered by the Development and Infrastructure Service this total has now risen further to more than £13 million paid out to local businesses during the pandemic. It was good to be able to help local businesses and keep the economy moving although with the criteria the Scottish Government set, there were a number of businesses we weren’t able to help which was unfortunate and I had lots of difficult conversations with local business owners who were really struggling at the time and the council used a lot of its own funds to run some additional grant schemes for local businesses.

Public reaction: The public reaction has mostly been really good - everyone has understood how busy we are and has been really supportive. It has been difficult sometimes especially with the grants as some people had to wait a long time to get the decisions and payments because we had so many applications and although we dropped most of our other work there were some things we still had to do within strict timescales - but again for the most part the local businesses understood all of this.

How has life changed personally? The biggest impact has been seeing my 5 year old son, he started primary 1 in August and the schools have been on-and-off since then. It has been lovely getting to know his teachers and they are doing a fantastic job in the circumstances. He is loving it now that the schools are back and he can see his friends again. Before the pandemic we used to go to soft-play or the cinema if it was too wet to go out and we are both looking forward to doing indoor stuff on rainy days again. Much as I like the skate park, you can’t get a nice cappuccino when it’s raining down there! I’m also looking forward to seeing my niece in Dumbarton and my nephews in Stirling when we can travel again. Kids grow so fast and I have missed out on so much!