Robotics programme

We are proud to be working with UiPath technologies  to provide automated processes to teams which allow them to stop undertaking repetitive work and focus on delivering top quality services to our residents. 

Robotics works by performing tasks that would normally be carried out by a staff member, and can include uploading/downloading documents, putting information into systems for staff to work on, and producing documents from provided information. 

Our approach to robotics is all about removing repetitive tasks from skilled team members and giving them back time to process customer queries quicker or in more depth, thereby delivering a better service to customers overall.  

We're really proud to have automated elements of our planning process to allow our teams to focus on adding value to our customer. 

Examples of the processes we have and are implementing in planning include: 

Daily planning document upload

• The planning robotic process runs overnight transferring documents that customers have submitted to support their planning application from the Planning Portal into the processing software.
• As well as uploading the documents between two systems, the robot also identifies what the documents are and assigns them the correct title to allow the planning officers to quickly navigate through the documents.
• The planning team can then start processing as soon as they start work the next day instead of opening each document, identifying it, manually uploading them and then allocating them to the right document type.
• Not uploading large quantities of documents during the working day, which historically slowed down the planning system performance, has also helped the wider team.
• This automation delivers 864 hours of capacity saving each year, allowing staff to focus on serving customers and processing planning applications.

Historic planning document upload

• Robotics is helping us to load old planning documents into our Uniform system, so that customers and staff can access historic plans and documents.
• The documents currently sit in a shared file that is inaccessible to customers.
• Moving the documents into Uniform will allow customers and staff to access historic plans and documents quickly as customers can access via the Planning portal.
• Moving over 250k documents automatically will save over 1000 hours compared to someone manually moving documents as well as providing an improved service to our customers.

Building control application upload

• Robotics is helping us to load building control applications into our Uniform system, ready for the team to process.
• This process will identify documents, assign and load them into the end system for the building control team to process each morning.
• This process will provide over 500 hours of capacity savings and streamline processes We are keen to share our learning so far and to inspire other council teams to consider implementing robotics.

Enforcement complaint upload

• Robotics is helping us to load data collected within a complaint form about enforcement into the Uniform processing system.
• This speeds up responses to customers and removes the need to manually key data.
• A saving of 270 hours of processing time per annum will be achieved by this automation. 

We are keen to share our learning so far and to inspire other council teams to consider implementing robotics.

If you would like to find out more, please fill in our website feedback form and our digital team will contact you.