Decisions

The Council and Team Doncaster Partnership have embarked upon an ambitious programme to ensure that all individuals, communities and places feel the impact of the Doncaster Growing Together Strategy – the Partnerships guiding plan of action.
This commitment includes an agreement to develop a specific local focus of partnership working, including a major joint effort on prevention – spotting and stemming the flow of issues and concerns before they become acute. This joint local focus will be ever more important in the post Covid-19 period, and a localised, community driven approach has been agreed as a key mean to deliver the Mayor’s published Recovery and Renewal Plan.

To formally establish a temporary Localities Team to design, develop and implement the locality working model and request funding of £604,490 from the Council’s Service
Transformation Fund. Details of the roles is outlined below and a proposed structure chart attached

To purchase PPE equipment for Internal and contracted staff on Home to School Transport

To purchase and distribute PPE for use on Home to School Transport to all internal and external staff.

Following agreement from Public Health it is proposed to move to reusable face coverings from September onwards as these are better for the environment and also more cost efficient than the disposable masks. The Council’s contracted supplier guarantees these

This Decision record has been requested by Councillor Nuala Fennelly. Transport is usually provided using the best value principal. Children are transported to Special Schools using mini buses with 16 seats. The government guidance suggests that social distancing is not required on dedicated home to school transport and the Council has been working to this advice. However, it is recognised that this may be of concern to parents who are extremely clinically
vulnerable. Therefore the decision has been taken to provide an individualised service which ensures social distancing is in place in these circumstances. This will take the form of one driver and one child per vehicle. The full costs are not able to be identified at this time, however, individual journeys cost between £30 and £80 depending on the distance. A claim will be submitted for additional costs to SYPTE who have received funding for home to school transport. However, reimbursement is not guaranteed

To provide personalised travel arrangements for children when they or their families are extremely clinically vulnerable.

Doncaster Council requires a solution that will deliver AI (Artificial Intelligence) across a number of different channels including Voice over Telephony; the council currently has an Amazon Alexa integration that was developed in-house.

Initially we will require Telephony using a specific service area, which is Waste and Recycling. However, depending on the success of this first integration the council expects the provided solution should be capable of both AI through Telephony and through the web using channels such as a Chatbot through Web Chat and other such channels. Also it should be capable of integrating other services areas.

The council has a website that allows residents to self-serve this can be found at https://www.doncaster.gov.uk/, the initial service we wish to have delivered on AI Telephony is Waste and Recycling the processes and information for this service can be found on the website at https://www.doncaster.gov.uk/services/bins-recycling-waste.
In line with the new Digital Recovery and Renewal Strategy the council has procured a supplier to develop AI over Telephony for Waste and Recycling. We need to draw down the budget to progress the project.

To draw down the allocated budget from the Council Wide Systems capital funding that was previously approved for this development. The budget is now required to progress the project, the overall allocation is £80,000.


During the COVID 19 pandemic, we made the decision to only deliver critical services to enable us to respond to the increased need for help and support from residents across the Authority. This included the closure of the council’s one-stop shop and the removal in telephone contact to report and apply for non-critical services, moving to the availability of online reporting only. This has resulted in a significant peak in customers accessing council services online.


As an Authority, we now have 73% of council services online and more customers are choosing to access services online. Currently customer contact is; Telephone 51%, Online 48% and Face-to-Face 1%. Telephone is still the preferred method of contact, when we experience peaks in customer contact via the telephone, we see an increase in customers accessing services online. However once the telephone contact returns to normal levels a core of customers return to the telephone as their preferred method of contact.

Customer-facing AI can populate answers to customer’s FAQ’s, respond to queries in real time escalating to Officers only where necessary. AI can report customer enquiries and help customers complete application forms, guiding them through the process. eliminating the time spent collecting and processing data. On average automation technology can increase wait times by 50% with accuracy levels of over 90%.
This technology is to initially use AI for Waste