Issue - meetings

Scott Tompkins summarised the following points: 

·  All comments came through the ‘contact us’ system and they were categorised into complaints, compliments, questions, or comments 

·  There were 4335 contact cases last year across all directorates with 2000 of them being complaints 

·  Communities got 528 complaints last year which was down from the previous years 

·  20% (most) complaints were around CPE followed by waste management which was around 10% 

·  42% of the complaints environmental services received were around things like the state of a footway, roads or how grass was cut 

·  Service requests e.g. to fill a pothole were not deemed as complaints but they were if they were chased up 

·  The new customer service system will be rolled out in August 2023. It will include all the contact had with each resident and will improve the consistency and quality of responses to them     

Councillor Gilbert noted that residents and parish/town councils feel that larger authorities are like businesses so they may not interact with them like they want to. They feel that their complaints would not be heard so the doors should be opened so all councils (larger and smaller) can hear what residents think.  

Scott Tompkins concurred with this and said that the new system should make it a lot easier for residents to interact with the Council. The new system also makes it easier to report potholes with their phones.  

In response to the Chair, Scott Tompkins said that the new system will include contacts made online and over the phone.   

Following a supplementary from the Chair, Scott Tompkins stated that the customer management relations system would be implemented first which tracks responses which would mean that the resident will get a response quicker.  

In response to Councillor Mejar Singh, Scott Tompkins said that WCC’s current website has a ‘report it’ system where road issues could be reported; the resident would set up an account and say how they want to be corresponded with. The new system would include a reference number so incidents could be tracked easily.