Title

Date

Start Time

Duration

The efficiency imperative: driving impact via data driven outreach With increasing demand and shrinking resources, councils face growing pressure to deliver impactful support to vulnerable residents efficiently.

In this webinar, we explore how data driven outreach campaigns can help local authorities overcome these challenges and achieve impactful results.

Join us to hear from two leading local government organisations as they share their experiences using Campaign Manager, a powerful new feature of the LIFT platform.

Discover how they’ve leveraged their data using intelligent analytics to identify financially vulnerable residents, streamline their outreach processes, and maximise both resident outcomes and cost savings.

This session will cover:

- Strategies to manage rising demand with limited resources
- How data insights can drive targeted and efficient resident support
- Real world results from councils using Campaign Manager for impactful outreach campaigns

Join us to learn how your council can also turn insights into action and make smarter, data-driven decisions to support your communities.

With guest speakers:

- Seth Pearson, Darlington Partnership Director, Darlington Borough Council
- Sarah Small, Darlington Partnership Programme Officer, Darlington Borough Council
- Fahmida Rahman, Senior Policy Officer, Greater London Authority

26/3/2025

10:30am GMT

1.3 hours

Protecting vulnerable consumers in regulated sectors

30/4/2025

10:30am BST

1.3 hours

Harnessing data for regional impact: empowering local leaders to drive change Devolution is one of the core missions of the new government, promising a strong focus on giving local areas more control over services. To tackle economic inactivity, and with many people across the UK needing support, it’s vital that local authorities deliver effective, targeted interventions. The success of tailored, region-specific approaches depends on how well local areas can harness data to drive change.

Local organisations, from Mayoral Combined Authorities to county councils, need to deliver these crucial services. Accessing and using the data insights required to implement efficient and effective programmes is a challenge and, without localised data, decision making can become less accurate. This leads to inefficient resource allocation and missed opportunities to reach those who need help the most.

Data analysis offers the key to overcoming these challenges. By harnessing the power of local data, authorities can get the accurate insights they need to target support where it will be most effective. With the right insights, local areas can design and deliver services that are more tailored, timely and impactful, ensuring the right residents get the right support at the right time.

Proven results from current data led initiatives already show the transformative potential of this approach.

Join this webinar to hear from guest speakers who have successfully implemented data driven campaigns. They will showcase real world examples of how they have come together to achieve measurable outcomes.

We’ll also explore how these data insights can be applied to address key issues like economic inactivity, youth unemployment and social isolation to deliver lasting change across regions.

21/5/2025

10:30am BST

1.3 hours

Blog

Our Better Off Calculator gets a new design

Janet Harkin Published on 05th July 2021

Our Better Off Calculator gets a new design thanks to recent funding from Nesta’s Rapid Recovery Challenge competition. The improvements we have made to the design of our award-winning calculator will give people a better experience on both mobile devices and computers. These changes are live now.

Visit www.betteroffcalculator.co.uk to log in or view the new changes.

As part of our comprehensive redesign we conducted a number of research groups to make sure we have the end user’s needs at the heart of our calculator. We listened to over 1,000 people who used the calculator and sat down with eight of our organisational clients to get feedback from frontline advisors too.

We learned that we needed to enhance the user interface and improve the overall user experience, particularly on mobile devices and for people with additional accessibility requirements. This is exactly what we have done, making the calculator more accessible and easier to use whilst still retaining its high technical accuracy and built-in help features.

We are particularly grateful to Open Inclusion, a company that runs user research sessions with people living with disabilities, who helped us to improve the design of our calculator so that it is as accessible and user-friendly as possible.

Watch a short demo of the Better Off Calculator’s new design

Video transcript

Hi there, I’m Louise from Policy in Practice and I’ll be showing you the new design of our Better Off Calculator.

We recognise that the benefit system can be difficult to understand, especially if you’re new to it or unfamiliar with the system.

Over the last couple of months we’ve been speaking to people who are receiving benefits to hear about the biggest problems they face and hear their recommendations for how we could improve the Better Off Calculator.

We heard that people want to know about all the support that’s out there for them and get this information quickly and easily so that they can maximise their incomes.

Many people are unaware of the full range of help and support that’s out there and, as a result, people are missing out on around £10 billion of benefits that they’re entitled to claim each year.

For example, over one million families miss out on housing benefit worth over £3,000 a year.

We want to make sure that people receive the money that they are eligible for.

I’ll show you some of the changes that we’ve made to the Better Off Calculator to help people get this information easily.

We heard from people that the language used in benefit calculators and benefit application forms can often seem confusing and daunting. As a result, we’ve tried to use plain English wherever possible and, where we do have to ask something that might be a little more complicated, we’ve added some additional clarification.

For example, if I click find out more I can see some additional text that tells me exactly who counts as a non-dependent.

We’ve also changed the layout of our results page. We heard from people that they wanted to immediately see how much income they would be eligible for if they claimed all the benefits that are out there.

So, now I can see this at the top of the page, in orange, and then if I scroll down, I can see exactly how we reached this figure and I can apply for any benefits that I’m eligible for but not currently receiving.

We’ve also changed the section down here where we show additional things to consider and additional types of support that people might be eligible for.

So, for example, we flag up things such as reduced price wifi tariffs that people might not know are out there but can make a difference if someone is struggling to make ends meet. We give some clarification around who might qualify for a reduced wifi tariff and then we give them the link with some information to find out more and make an application.

As well as improving the layout on the desktop computer, we’ve also improved the way that the Better Off Calculator works on mobiles and tablets since we know that more and more people are accessing the calculator this way.

I’d really recommend that you go and try out the new design of the calculator at www.betteroffcalculator.co.uk.

This is for everyone. There’s £10 billion of unclaimed benefits out there so we think that everyone should give it a go. Thanks very much.

Next steps

Find out more about our Better Off Calculator here
If you’re an individual who wants to find out what benefits you could get visit our simple, independent benefits calculator here
If you’re an organisation with frontline advisors, such as a local authority, housing provider, Citizens Advice or debt recovery organisation you can request a free consultation to see how the Better Off Calculator can help you here