Who we are and why we're here

A WARM welcome to the website of Staffordshire Connects, a partnership of 10 councils working together wherever we can to improve public services more quickly.

Our focus is efficiency and transformation, getting the benefit from developing new ways of working which all can share.  This has included procurement and development of ICT systems, promoting a shared services approach, and is now about joint working, process improvement and sharing good practice.  For example, we made it possible for Stoke on Trent City Council to collect parking penalties for other Staffordshire councils as part of a campaign to make our streets safer for everyone.  We have introduced technology that has improved the management of hygiene inspections of food premises, and we’re looking at ways in which the councils can help each other to crack down on environmental crimes such as fly tipping, fly posting and littering.

We were set up in 2002 to enable our partners to learn from each other and make their services easier for customers to access, and deliver quantifiable efficiency gains.  Our early achievements included:

• A Customer Relationship Management system that gave council employees the information they needed to deal with most service requests at the first point of contact

• A system that allowed people to pay for council services 24/7

• A unique Joined-up Directory that made it easier for the councils to communicate with each other and point customers in the right direction for requests that could not be sorted out immediately.

Our successes resulted in us being named best public services partnership in the UK in 2005. The following year, we won a Government Beacon Award for transforming public services through partnerships.

Last Modified: 22/10/2009 09:12:02
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