Calderdale Council

THE CLIENT

Based in the heart of Halifax in West Yorkshire, Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council commission and deliver services to support the local community. With making a difference being their core value, Calderdale Council pride themselves on delivering high quality and valuable services for their residents.

THE CHALLENGE

With security at the forefront of their decision, Calderdale Council were looking for a way to reduce the risk of unauthorised visitors entering their premises whilst also having the ability to pull live reports of who was on their site at any moment in time.

As the council welcomes a great number of candidates, agents and guests into their venue, they needed a sign in method that would enable them to ensure that their visitor information records are accurate without slowing down the onsite registration process.

THE SOLUTION

A unique way in which the InVentry system has been put in place is proving a success. For Calderdale council the InVentry system is used to efficiently get candidates, agents and guests into the count venue on the day of an election. Before adopting this method of visitor management, a much less time friendly approach was taken to do so. Ian Gledhill explains: “People used to have to sign in, they were given a badge manually and a wristband. But now, everyone comes in, scans their barcode and the badge gets printed and they’re in and away. It’s 3 or 4 times faster than it used to be.”

The outdated approach was not only proving time consuming but above all else insecure. With InVentry in place the risk of unwanted visitors is minimized and can be dealt with effectively. Ian explains: “Well, essentially, we already know who is invited so anyone that is not on the list is not coming in. We just use it to record that people are there. If anybody else then tries to sign in using the same credentials we’ve got a photographic record of who it is and we can find them, find out who they are and how they got in.”

Knowing that the data can be disposed of is something which Ian feels positive about with GDPR being such a concern. We asked him if he was confident with the service that the product provided:

“From a GDPR point of view, yes. I filled out one of our checklists and you’ve got a section on your website as well. I’m happy with the way that it’s going, completely happy.”

Ian Gledhill, Electoral Outreach Officer, commented:

People used to have to sign in, they were given a badge manually and a wristband. But now, everyone comes in, scans their barcode and the badge gets printed and they’re in and away. It’s 3 or 4 times faster than it used to be.”

“From the point of view of actually using the system to get people in and accounted for – it saves time and it’s just infinitely better than the system that we used previously. It also helps us to make sure people are at the right place at the right time which is brilliant!”