Agenda item

Chris Wallace asked the Executive Member for Finance the following question:

 

Question:

The 21st Century Project is supposed to reduce staff costs whilst improving interaction between the Council and residents primarily through the use of enhanced IT. How will this work when there has been no input from customers and the Council’s website has been downgraded in a national survey by Better Connected from 3 Star to 2 Star while other local Councils are improving?

 

The Council are investing large sums of our money into IT systems and staff training but no one has bothered to ask us what we want to see improved. There are many residents in the Borough who are disabled or disadvantaged who cannot access your IT services and the helpline is less than helpful, nine times out of ten they don’t know the answer nor do they know who might. Reporting problems on the website appears to be a complete waste of time with no acknowledgments at the time or later by email. Web pages over 5 years out of date, updated pages having incorrect information, the list is endless. The communications about 21st Century, even the minutes from the Scrutiny Committee, are all papering over the problems being experienced by your customers. Everything is supposedly on track, everyone is on board with the changes and the Council will save huge sums of money. No it’s not. If two out of three, on track and on board, are false can you be sure that the predicted costs and savings are true. Involved Tenants have questioned changes to the Housing Service and yet again there is a total lack of communication or consultation on this area of your business. Rumours of the Housing Service splitting into multiple areas within the Council are hopefully just that because the destruction of the most organised, experienced and dedicated team will come back to haunt you. By all means change what needs to be changed, to improve services, but don’t ruin the parts that work in your drive for change.

 

Minutes:

The 21st Century Project is supposed to reduce staff costs whilst improving interaction between the Council and residents primarily through the use of enhanced IT. How will this work when there has been no input from customers and the Council’s website has been downgraded in a national survey by Better Connected from 3 Star to 2 Star while other local Councils are improving?

 

The Council are investing large sums of our money into IT systems and staff training but no one has bothered to ask us what we want to see improved.  There are many residents in the Borough who are disabled or disadvantaged who cannot access your IT services and the helpline is less than helpful, nine times out of ten they don’t know the answer nor do they know who might.  Reporting problems on the website appears to be a complete waste of time with no acknowledgments at the time or later by email.  Web pages over 5 years out of date, updated pages having incorrect information, the list is endless.  The communications about 21st Century, even the minutes from the Scrutiny Committee, are all papering over the problems being experienced by your customers.  Everything is supposedly on track, everyone is on board with the changes and the Council will save huge sums of money.  No it’s not.  If two out of three, on track and on board, are false can you be sure that the predicted costs and savings are true.  Involved Tenants have questioned changes to the Housing Service and yet again there is a total lack of communication or consultation on this area of your business.  Rumours of the Housing Service splitting into multiple areas within the Council are hopefully just that because the destruction of the most organised, experienced and dedicated team will come back to haunt you.  By all means change what needs to be changed, to improve services, but don’t ruin the parts that work in your drive for change.

 

Answer

Thank you for your question, which covers a number of issues which I will group for ease:

 

The existing web page and service provided through our Customer Service Teams is the first topic.  The Council regularly works with our residents to find out what they want from our website and to build the site based on this feedback as we believe, it is more important for us to find out what residents want, as opposed to a rating exercise based on categories.

 

In fact the Council scored better in this year’s Better Connected survey than last years, showing a good direction of travel.  However, we agree with the SOCITM’s assessment of our online mapping services, and have already begun improving this area as part of the 21st Century Council Programme and this will be online shortly.

 

The Council’s Customer Service team is able to resolve and manage a high proportion of calls that are received, however we recognise that this can be improved for residents by increasing the scope of the customer service remit and we are actively addressing this via the 21st Century Programme, which brings me on to the 21st Century programme.

 

This programme has been spilt into two phases with the initial and now completed stage focusing on our back office systems and services.  We have been making changes to how we serve each other within the Council first so that we could learn from this before we look at those parts of the Council that directly serve our residents.  This will explain why you feel you have not yet seen any direct improvements.  The programme is seeking to make service delivery more customer focused and much easier for our residents to access.  In particular, we will be looking at and prioritising the high volume processes that are regularly undertaken by our residents.  However, whilst we will be looking to make these available online to meet customer demand, I can assure you there are no plans to remove the option for residents to opt for “assisted delivery” via Customer Services when transacting with the Council, should they need to.

 

Finally, the Housing Service: - This Programme, as I have said before, has not yet considered how the services provided by our Housing teams can be enhanced through the programme.  As in any change however I am aware that there has been speculation as to what might happen to the configuration of the service but I can assure you that the programme does not set out to reduce or diminish existing services, rather it is seeking efficiencies in the way the Council is organised to enable a much more joined up customer responsive service for all of our residents.  As an important stakeholder group our involved tenants will be part of the design process.

 

Supplementary Question:

With the HRA being a standalone ring-fenced budget, ergo non-transferable to the General Fund, we the involved tenants on behalf of the 3,000 plus council tenants across the Borough, ask the Council to consider the views expressed by the four involved tenant chairs and instruct senior Council officers to listen to our opinion.  Please do not become another Kensington and Chelsea Council, listen to your tenants.

 

Supplementary Answer:

I think it is fair to say that we do listen to the tenants.  We pay attention to what they have to say, we have regular meetings with them and will continue to do so.