Parishes offer expanded digital services

Sunday 01 January 2017

Paying your rates and informing your parish about any changes such as a new address are now a little bit easier thanks to enhanced digital services.

In the past although there was a single sheet of paper that you filled in notifying the parish authorities of any change of name or address which was then used to update all your other details – driving licence, electoral register, rates, and dog licences - some people still viewed it as cumbersome and time consuming.

But that’s now a thing of the past. Although you can still use the paper-based system, you can now also do it online. The system was made available in a low-key launch earlier this year.

You can also complete your rates Annual Return online and pay online. More than 28,000 Annual Returns are sent out each year, covering almost 60,000 properties – including every household in Jersey. Around 78,000 Rates Demands are sent out to collect rates totalling more than £26m.

According to Constable Len Norman, chairman of the Comite des Connetables: “the introduction of these online options allow us to provide an improved service for parishioners. Streamlined online services also free up busy parish staff to offer the friendly, face to face assistance that continue to be important for some parishioners in some circumstances. I strongly encourage more ratepayers to take advantage of these online services in 2017”.

The expanded service has been overseen by the Constable of St Brelade, Steve Pallett: “for increasing numbers of parishioners a well-designed online service is now a more convenient option than a paper form. A particular challenge has been to verify the identity of the parishioner without undermining the ease of use online. Interestingly for the change of name or address services we have found that whilst some parishioners prefer to provide evidence of their identity in person a large majority (about 83%) choose to answer a set of questions online and some are electing to provide a selfie as the most convenient option”.

The online services have been developed by Jersey-based company teleological. Director Brian Coutanche notes: “teleological originally developed the systems used by parishes to administer driving licences in 2006 and rates administration in 2010. It has been our privilege to work with the Connetables towards the goal of rapidly introducing online services so good that parishioners will prefer to use them. At the same time these services are delivering cost savings through streamlined and automated processes”.