Established in April 2019, Somerset West & Taunton Council covers one of the most stunning areas in England. As with most district councils, they have a large portfolio of multi dwelling properties and in addition, as with most councils they also provide a wide range of sporting and leisure facilities.

The council has to ensure that access is not only controlled for residential properties, but for other council managed buildings, like sport and leisure facilities.

The Challenge

With such a wide range of properties requiring access control management, the council were having to invest a considerable amount of time and money, making sure residents and sports & leisure users across the district, had the right keys for buildings. When new keys were required or existing ones were lost, these had to be replaced as quickly as possible and delivered to the right person. The result was a time intensive process that didn’t allow the council to provide the level of service they were looking for.

A decision was made to review their process and find the best technology to replace the old key based systems.

The Solution

The Council already had KMS SimpleKey Web controlling communal door fob access to their residential buildings. The system efficiently minimises the time required for building management from the council to add and delete fobs with real time reporting from any web enabled device. The council could also clearly see how SimpleKey Web could also be used to manage access into sport and leisure facilities across the district as well.

The Results

The implementation of SimpleKey Web for residential buildings as well as the pavilions and leisure facilities has greatly improved the communal door access for residents as well as sports teams across the district and has made it stand out from other projects.

Due to the flexibility of SimpleKey Web, coaches are allocated fobs, these can then be easily and quickly given access to pavilions for specific times, ensuring teams can uses the facilities when needed. The system also allows the council management teams to run regular fob usage reports to see exactly which coaches have been using the facilities and when, allowing the council to continuously review and improve their services.

Julian Norton – Case Manager Asset Management:“SimpleKey Web delivered everything we knew it would for controlling access into sport and leisure facilities, like it has been doing for our residential managed properties over the years. Being able to easily manage access into leisure facilities across the district has resulted in delivering important health benefits to the area. This has all been supported by the excellent team at KMS who have continued to help us whenever needed always delivering beyond expectations”