Cincom UK Ltd, headquartered in Maidenhead, Berkshire, has announced its Housing Benefits System, the second member of its Dynamic Environment family of products for local authorities. Initially implemented at borough level with Rhuddlan Borough Council in North Wales, the system was then developed at metropolitan level with Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council. It is portable across IBM, ICL, Bull and DEC VAX hardware and uses Mantis, Cincom’s applications generator. Wigan Council, in common with every other local authority in the UK, has had to prepare for the additional administrative burdens of the Community Charge and new housing benefits regulations arising from the Social Security Act 1986. Wigan Council was initially committed to Bull’s Logos Housing Benefits System, but neighbouring Tameside Council adopted Cincom’s Community Charge System and Wigan subsequently followed suit, running both systems on Bull hardware. Barry Hill, Wigan’s Information Technology Manager, claims that the council has saved UKP250,000 by implementing the two systems – the saving comes mainly from reduced disk storage requirements. Cincom’s commitment to the local authority market began with the Community Charge System and the company increasingly regards it as a major area. At present it is developing Housing Rents and Competitive Tendering Systems and both will be available within the coming year. Robert Hall, Cincom’s Business Development manager anticipates that English local authorities will experience the problems already facing their Scottish counterparts. The combination of last-minute legislation and complex strategic systems written in Cobol has led to inadequacies, only partly compensated for by manual efforts. Hall believes that Mantis is flexible enough to accommodate future legislative changes and the differing needs of local authorities. Both sytems are available now, the Community Charge System costs between UKP70,000 and UKP130,000, and the Housing Benefits System is between UKP55,000 and UKP100,000.
