Our complaint investigations have enabled us to identify ways in which we can improve the service we deliver as part of our commitment to continuous improvement in service delivery. Below are outlined the lessons we have learnt during the last year and the steps we have taken to improve our processes:
Service Area
Improvements
Housing
Regular monitoring meetings with housing surveyors and Mears to ensure works to tenants properties are carried out in time and ensuring any delays or missed works are identified and acted upon.
Mears have been advised to send out letters to advise housing tenants of start dates for works to their properties, at least one week before the commencement date. In this letter and/or during the visit Mears should explain the work process and what facilities will be available whilst the work is underway.
Ensuring housing inspections are booked in when requested, even if they are awaiting input from other teams where property works are overlapping.
Calls should be made to tenants by housing surveyors within two weeks to update them regarding repair works to their properties.
Appointment of a designated Housing Voids Surveyor who oversees property works from start to completion. All property works must be signed off with any defects noted completed within 7 days of a tenancy starting.
Housing Strategy and Options
Development of the council’s working relationships with other agencies to ensure that anyone applying to the housing register can be offered the correct advice and support, not just in terms of applying to the housing register, but also when they are housed. Cases to be regularly reviewed with the Housing Allocations team to ensure that the policy is applied correctly, fairly and consistently.
Communication training for staff to ensure that in future they communicate the right information to customers in a format that is the most suitable for each customer’s needs.
Customer Support
Change of address requests for garden waste subscriptions are now being logged by the Customer contact team via the Salesforce system to ensure there is a recorded log of change of addresses for subscriptions. A supporting checklist to support the Customer Contact Officers in handling these requests has been developed to follow that will allow them to change the garden waste addresses and on the direct debit system.
Staff have been reminded of the importance of being vigilant with the details being entered into our financial system and double-checking any manually input details to avoid customer errors.
Training in customer call standards for Customer Support team and communication of the Council’s expectations when taking phone calls through staff 1-2-1 meetings with their line managers.
Planning
Building resilience in the Planning team to support casework following the recruitment of seven new officers last year.
Building Control
Building Control Chief Officer meetings to be resumed and future use of Submitaplan platform to be reviewed.
Introduction of the Planning Portal platform for users to submit building control applications.
Reminding the Support Team the importance of appropriate customer service and reputational risks of providing poor service as well as the correct process for handling calls.
Environmental Health
Advice and training to officers about the length of time taken to respond to customers and use of holding letters to advise customers that we have received either the call, email or letter and if there is a delay on responding.
Parking
Introduction of a new system for managing disabled bay applications so future applications will be monitored by the back-office team more efficiently.
Looking at using a different contractor to undertake dropped kerb works that can support any outstanding jobs in order to ensure they are done sooner rather than later.
PR, Website and Comms
When designing our own online forms more consideration to be given to language used and explanations if it is in relation to legal terminology.
More awareness of dyslexia when assisting customers in person or on the phone.
