How Luton Borough Council Generated £1.5M in Additional Revenue using Voicescape Collections

£1.5M

 Additional Revenue generated from April 2025 - March 2026

59%

 reduction in the year-end Council Tax gap (1.69% - 0.69%) 

62,351

 SMS Messages automated (FY24 - 25)

Luton Borough Council has generated £1.5m in incremental revenue to date and has moved from 1.69% behind target to 0.69% by year-end, using Voicescape Collections for Revenues & Benefits.

Council context

• Luton Borough Council serves 85,000+ households across Bedfordshire.
• Younger-than-average demographic; significant unemployment, deprivation and child poverty.
• Revenues & Benefits remit includes Council Tax Billing and Recovery, Business Rates, Free School Meals, Adult Social Care Assessments and Debt Recovery, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support.

The Challenge

The Council, like others nationwide, faced challenges brought on by COVID-19, which completely stopped court processes as they could not operate remotely; leading to backlogs with Summons, Liability Orders and Escalations. Alongside this, there has been a significant debt transformation project underway following a restructure, which further strained resources. Together, these factors meant that Luton had not fully recovered and was struggling to address backlogs while maintaining consistent collections.

• The team were stretched, and resources meant that the team were not able to prioritise reviewing debt cases. Furthermore, they did not have either the systems or the capacity to make proactive outbound contact using SMS Messages.

Before using Voicescape, Luton Borough Council were:

• 1.69% behind their annual Council Tax target and unable to proactively contact residents at scale
• Struggling to prioritise cases and proactively contact residents - instead, the team was relying on their contact centre for inbound calls.

Overall, the Council needed to generate more revenue, but would have been unable to do this via manual and inefficient methods. Luton decided to adopt Voicescape Collections, helping them to transform their Debt Recovery process, and thereby accomplish their collections target and more.

The Solution

After the Housing team demonstrated a measurable ROI using Voicescape Collections, the Revenues & Benefits team built a successful business case to adopt the same approach.

Luton BC use Voicescape Collections for their Council Tax Collections, specifically for Pre-Reminder and Pre-Summons payment nudges. These nudges reach residents at the decisive moment before formal action, prompting faster payments and reducing avoidable arrears. Voicescape has been easy to adapt to and helped reduce call volumes, with many residents preferring to self-serve online. Voicescape sends Pre-Reminder texts to those who, if they did not pay, would receive a Reminder notice. Additionally, Voicescape sends Pre-Summons voice nudges offering self-serve options to those who would receive a Court Summons notice and incur additional costs if residents failed to take action over their debt.

Voicescape Collections additionally enables the team to:

• Provide multiple opportunities for residents to take accountability over their debt; with at least five options to self-serve through nudge messaging.
• Reach a wider audience with minimal input from their team, leading to greater efficiency gains and improved collection rates.
• Easily monitor progress and upload case information, Voicescape’s Operation Dashboard provides real-time information. Users can monitor daily activity and analyse results and outcomes from the outbound communications.
• Expand their collection strategies to other areas in the Council, such as Adult Social Care debt, by providing more options and a wider choice of actions.

The Results

“Voicescape Collections collected £1.5 million extra revenue that the council would not have had previously, and that this is more than double what we collected in the same period last year.”

Debra Fensome, Head of Revenues and Benefits, Luton Borough Council.

The solution generated £1.5m in additional revenue, helping Luton exceed their arrears target and close the gap from 1.69% behind target to 0.69% by year-end. Based on their year-to-date collection figures for their two modules (Pre-Summons Voice Campaign and Pre-Reminder SMS modules).

“The collaboration with Voicescape has been very successful: it’s collaboration working at its best."

 Debra Fensome, Head of Revenues and Benefits, Luton Borough Council.

Outcomes:

• £18K collected using our Pre-Reminder SMS module for Council Tax on the first day of launching the campaign. A third of that coming from one payment of £6,000.

Team Impact:

• Facilitated easy, self-serve payments online or via their 24hr automated payment line.

The team were initially concerned that the campaign would generate a high volume of inbound calls, but this didn’t materialise. In practice, the number of calls was far lower than expected due to the strong levels of self-serve payment.

Engagement:

• 18,179 SMS Messages issued across both campaigns (from Oct 2024 – end of FY) using Voicescape - 16,503 of which were delivered successfully (90.78%), with 2,839 of them paid the amount in full (17.2%) and 1,325 (8%) led into direct conversations with Luton’s Recovery Team.
• 62,351 SMS Messages (n FY2025-26) issued on behalf of Luton across both campaigns, of which 54,580 were delivered successfully (87.54%) and 914 (1.67%) led to direct conversations with Luton’s Recovery Team - reduced from the previous year since Luton signposts Tax Payers to pay or contact them online, steering residents towards self-serve.
• 7,213 residents (of these 62,351 SMS Messages) paid the amount in full (11.57%) from messages to residents that were due a Reminder or a Summons.

Luton BC saw how Voicescape enabled them to reach a wider audience with minimal input and high reward, showcasing significant time saving for Debra’s team and rapid revenue collection results:

“After a three-month proof of concept, it was a no-brainer to choose Voicescape Collections, and I always praise how much extra revenue Voicescape is bringing us in."

Debra Fensome, Head of Revenues and Benefits.

Overall, Luton saw a rapid, measurable improvement in their Council Tax collection strategy, enabled by proactive engagement, scalable automation and clearer routes to payment.

Moving forward, Luton is looking at introducing Adult Social Care debt collection and Council Tax small balances and HB arrears; following the success of the Council Tax Pre Reminder and Council Tax Pre Summons campaigns.

If you would like to explore how Voicescape Collections can help your Revenues and Benefits team reduce arrears and increase in-year collection, get in touch with us today.