By Nick Mann | 11 November 2011
Tell Us Once, the one-stop birth and death notification system recommended by Sir David Varney in 2006, is finally being rolled out nationally, promising public sector savings of more than £100m over the next ten years.
Under the system,council registrars notified of births and bereavements will be able to electronically inform up to 28 different services of the change in circumstances.
These services include those run by the council itself, the Department for Work and Pensions, Revenue & Customs, the Identity & Passport Service, the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Service Personnel & Veterans Agency.
The cost of the service is expected to run to £111m over the next ten years, but the DWP maintains that the net savings from using the Tell Us Once system will be £147m – £101m of which will be made by central and local government. The rest will be made by the general public, as individuals will need to contact government up to seven fewer times than now.
A spokeswoman for the department told Public Finance that savings for local and central government would be made in several ways.
‘Firstly, we take out the need for multiple contacts because we collect the data once and send it out directly and quickly to the back end services,’ she said.
‘This reduces administrative costs such as telephone calls and letters. By doing this we also remove duplicated work and the risk of error and the processing costs involved there.’
The system would also stop overpayments of benefits, such as state pensions and blue badges, she said by informing the authorities very soon after a person has died.
The DWP said its calculations of the savings were based on 75% of UK councils signing up to use the service, but, as it stands, 96% have now done so and it expects to have the whole country onboard by March 2012.
Lyn McDonald, programme director for Tell Us Once said: ‘We’ve done away with the red tape that usually confronts a person wanting to report a change in their circumstances to government.
‘This will result in significant savings for central and local government organisations at a time when they are under real financial pressure.’
The DWP is now looking for private sector partners such as utility companies and banks to pay to be included in the service.
