Create a simple, easy to comprehend CTR policy document.
Connect CTR will quickly and effectively take your existing policy and reword the complicated language into an easy to understand scheme.
Transform your lengthy Council Tax Reduction scheme into a short document for customers, advisers, and staff. Reduce the amount of legal complexity that can be found in these schemes and turn them into plain English.
Our service will check your existing scheme for loopholes and areas of illegality. You may have an old scheme or one reviewed by a third party with sections that no longer conform to legislation. We will identify these and offer more appropriate wording. This satisfies any audit and legal review.
Connect CTR for Blackburn & Darwen Council saw remarkable results, with the size of their policy reducing massively from 98-pages to 45 without any compromise to the rules.
With our knowledge, experience and legal comprehension of what can be specified in these schemes, we are able to decipher the relevant wording that can be changed into plain English, yet still hold the same meaning.
All our work is customer focused. Team Netsol carry out an initial review of your existing document and discuss your needs and customise the output to suit. We give you back an editable document, tailored to your Authority, which you can revise further.
"Team Netsol have the Benefit knowledge and skill that we need to write our Council Tax Support Scheme."
Kevin Stewart, Business Unit Leader at Mid Sussex DC
Mid Sussex District Council introduced a new approach to how they calculate Council Tax Support to be more transparent to customers and to ease administration for its Council Tax team.
"We worked with Team Netsol to rewrite the whole scheme in easy to understand language that made it more accessible, easier to administer and gave us the confidence that it would now satisfy any audit or legal review"
Andy Ormerod
Head of Revenues, Benefits and Customer Services
, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
When faced with making additional budget savings in 2018, and the need to make some more significant changes to the scheme, Blackburn & Derwen Council took the opportunity to rewrite the whole scheme in easy to understand language that made it more accessible to understand, and easier to administer. The scheme now consists of 44 easy to read pages, rather than the previous 180-page document.
Connect CTR is not a rewrite of a policy. We aren't looking to change the way you already work but what we are doing is writing a better, shorter and more understandable scheme.
Another key element of Connect CTR is a legal review of your policy. We will review your whole scheme and highlight any sections that may not be deemed lawful. You will be provided with any recommendations of wording that could replace problematic areas of your scheme.
Existing policies are often an extension or amendment to generic schemes, which over time are adjusted to suit changes to policy. These will be full of redundant text and often laced with complicated legal jargon. We remove sections that are not applicable to your authority and are that which is difficult to understand and replace them with sentences that are easy to read.
Elected members, staff and your customers will all appreciate the plain language that we produce. As we’re not creating new schemes, but actually clarifying wording of existing documents, there will be no need for further consultation and review.
Every scheme that we produce is different. They aren’t based on generic schemes that are amended, these are bespoke to each authority and the result is an MS Word (editable) document that an authority can then use or adjust further at their discretion.
The Courtyard, Royal Mills
17 Redhill Street
Manchester M4 5BA
Email: info@teamnetsol.com
Phone: +44 (0)161 834 8342
Fax: +44 (0)161 831 7897