Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Executive

The Director of Housing and Customer Services presented the report to Members, and drew attention to the Intervention Plans in the appendix which contained remedial actions to address objectives or priorities where performance was below target.

Councillor S Sheahan felt that the information regarding the Customer Services Call Centre statistics was a little confusing and was concerned that the percentage of calls not being answered had risen from Quarter four.  The Director of Housing and Customer Services explained that a Head of Service had been appointed to address the issues within the service and raise its corporate profile, and assured Members that improvements would be seen soon.  He introduced Tom Shardlow, Head of Customer Services who would be presenting a report later in the meeting on the new Customer Services Strategy.  Councillor S Sheahan felt that it would be difficult to measure overall customer satisfaction across all services.

Councillor S Sheahan asked the following questions regarding the performance indicators at page 20 of the report:

• He felt it was unclear what the first three indicators related to and it seemed that one of these  targets had not been met yet had a green status.  The Director of Housing and Customer Services explained that the indicators questioned related to the performance of the Revenue and Benefits Service in days taken to process new claims / change of circumstances notification, he agreed it could be explained more clearly.  He also confirmed that the green status was a typographical error and would be corrected.

• Regarding the ‘Housing Benefit overpayment collection rate’ indicator, Councillor Sheahan felt that there was not enough information to explain the target, as 11 percent was a low figure.  The Director of Housing and Customer Services explained that the arrangements made to collect the overpayments were normally a small amount each week and would therefore often take around 12 months to two years to claim the full amount back.  He assured Members that it did not seem like much within this quarter but would rise throughout the year.

In response to a question from Councillor S Sheahan , the Director of Housing and Customer Services agreed to provide further information outside of the meeting regarding the 100 percent satisfaction rates of the housing repairs service.  He was aware that customers were called after having a repair completed at their property and this was how the figures had been obtained. 

Regarding the performance of the Leisure Centres, Councillor T Eynon asked for further information on lower income levels and why they were suffering in competition with other nearby gyms.  The Head of Community Services explained that the main issue was the difference in gym size and the age / amount of the equipment available.  The Leisure Centres had good but slightly ageing equipment which was very well used and there was simply not enough capacity available to compete with other new gyms in the area.  Councillor T Eynon also felt that the current branding was not quite right as it did  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15