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Payment facilities go district wide
Tuesday 22 April 2008
From 1 May, payment facilities including payment kiosks at the council’s Cityinfo sites will be withdrawn. Instead, customers can now pay their rent and council tax bills at over 50 post offices, newsagents and grocery stores in the Durham City area and many more nationwide that display either the Post Office or PayPoint logo.
This is the final stage of an extensive review of the revenues collection service, which looked at health and safety, customer accessibility and value for money aspects of the service. The first stage, introduced at the beginning of March involved the introduction of payment cards to replace the rent collection service which ceased on 28 March.
Paul Darby, director of financial services said: "The payment cards have proved a great success. Not only does the new system prevent our staff being exposed to security risks but its massively widened payment options across the whole district. Feedback from our customers has been positive from Day 1, there's been 12,500 transactions in the six weeks since their introduction and many have switched to alternative payment methods such as Direct Debit."
The new payment system is expected to deliver savings
through these efficiencies in cash collection.