Slough Residents' Questions - 27 April 2004

 

Question 15
   

From:  A Britwell Resident

It comes as no surprise to the long suffering residents of this borough that the council has deliberately failed to implement monitor and publicise a proper policy commanding public confidence on time limits for the acknowledgement of emails and letters, the reply to email and letters, the returning of residents phone calls and giving tenants acceptable, useful and informative replies to their correspondence.

What time limit do you think the council should introduce for responding to and answering Slough Residents' correspondence, which might satisfy the public?

Reply: Councillor Robert Anderson

The Council does have service standards for answering correspondence and telephones. These have been recently published in the spring 2004 edition of Housing Matters (page 5-8). The standards state the level of service people can expect in key areas including customer care.
The current standards include:

  • Aim to fully respond to all letters, faxes and e mails within 10 working days. If not we will send you a reply letting you know when you can expect a more detailed response
  • Aim to answer all telephone calls within 5 rings giving our name and department. If we cannot answer your query immediately we will ring you back with an agreed timescale.

These standards were re-issued following consultation with tenants.

Standards are monitored as part of the Council's Performance Management system. A Mystery Shopping exercise of telephone answering has recently been carried out that has given us valuable feedback and highlighted the areas we need to improve.

The Best Value Review of Customer Services has highlighted that significant change is needed to develop a more customer-focused way of doing business. The findings support the proposal to develop a Customer Service Centre.

As part of the review a Customer Service Charter is being developed to cover all council services. This is currently being finalised and will soon be issued for consultation. The Charter has been put together with the involvement of the Customer Service Panel. This panel has been formed from members of the Citizens Panel is is giving the Council qualitative feedback about current customer service and future developments.

  1 September 2004