Situation

The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (LBHF) has recently introduced a Clean Air Neighbourhood trial. Using a traffic control scheme to improve residents’ health by improving air quality and reducing congestion on small residential streets. This is just one-way local authorities are attempting to reduce nitrogen dioxide levels. That have crept back to unhealthy levels after a dip during the pandemic — with motorists being the biggest cause.

Clean Air Neighbourhoods introduce a range of measures. Including tree planting, traffic reduction trials, sustainable drainage schemes, school streets initiatives. And improved infrastructure for walking and cycling, which work together to enhance air quality and people’s health.

LBHF installed ten Videalert ANPR cameras to monitor and enforce the Clean Air Neighbourhoods. They recognised that the cameras would initially significantly increase CCTV clip review and back-office processing requirements. However, the existing back-office team at LBHF needed help to process the increased volumes due to their limited capacity.

NSL offer a resilience service to clients who require a highly flexible team of customer service agents to meet peaks. And troughs in demand for customer enquiries. Having previously used NSL’s resilience service to help clear a backlog of notice processing correspondence. The management at LBHF approached NSL. To provide a further resilience service to handle the anticipated increase in contraventions.

Solution and Implementation

Estimating the level of contraventions from these traffic schemes is notoriously difficult. And NSL was required to flex resources to meet the actual level of contraventions. The actual level of work needed was 3-4 times more than predicted. NSL provided an effective, professional resilience service to LBHF, processing 125,000 CCTV clip reviews during the first month of the implementation.

The NSL Single Contact Centre (SCC) flexed from a standing start to processing 3,000 – 4,000 CCTV clip reviews daily. Achieving a 93% acceptance rate whilst ramping up its processing capability. All KPI’s established with LBHF were met or exceeded. And the NSL team mobilised a team of eight customer services agents to meet the demand whilst continuing to fulfil all existing contracts KPI’s. And workloads across the Single Contact Centre.

Outcome

Demand for the SCC was three times higher than initially forecasted. However, due to the flexible resources available from the extra resilience service we provided, the requirements of LBHF were met whilst maintaining its existing KPI’s. Despite the increase in volume, CCTV clip reviews were processed within four working days, drivers were notified quickly, and traffic flow continued to improve.
The primary objective of this scheme is to create safer, greener and less polluted streets for residents to enjoy. Any additional revenue from issuing contravention notices and PCNs is reinvested back into the community.

 “We have been delighted with the speed and responsiveness of the NSL response – not only have they ensured we keep within statutory guidelines, but they have exceeded our expectations with the accuracy and effectiveness of the processing they have undertaken.”

Mark Fanneran – Parking Services
London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham