West Office customer service wobbling

The loss of the York Council’s Acomb Office continues to put pressure, on reception facilities at West Offices, two years after its closure.

This is how customer services at West Offices are now performing.

In person at West Offices

West Office reception stats

West Office reception stats

Only about 80% of customers are currently being seen within 10 minutes of arrival. This is however an improvement on 2013.

 Telephone

Only 40% of those telephoning the Council can expect to be answered within 20 seconds.

Around 25,000 telephone calls are made to the Council each month.

The Council blames peaks in call volumes – such as those caused by the Lendal bridge fine refund process – for the poor performance.

Telephone call performance

Telephone call performance

More staff have been recruited to bolster the service.

The last Council meeting was also told that “service provision will be enhanced by the introduction of the new voice server in the new year which will seek to serve callers better than the current version does with improved accuracy, and better information giving facilities including call waiting times.

In April we will also have a new web site in place that will also help customers in providing information they have told us they want to see. This will be followed by the implementation of a new customer system which will be easier for our residents to use on-line when, booking, applying or paying for services”

The one crumble of comfort for the York Council are the results of a satisfaction survey of those customers contacting them by telephone during the summer.

The figures show that over 90% rated the response as “Very Good or Excellent”.

 Emails

Ironically the longest delays occur on electronic communications with Emails sometime not being processed for over 2 weeks.

This despite the priority for the Councils customer handling to be electronically based as it is the cheapest access channel to administer.

The Council admits they have failed on this important project

“The current system does not currently provide data on the completed time for emails against service level, this would have to be a manual calculation on each case. The current service level is within 24hours however as a result of the uplift in contact as mentioned below and reduced resource availability we have not met this timescale for some”.

The last Council meeting was told that the Email backlog would be eliminated by the middle of October and that responses would then be issued within 24 hours

Speed in initially acknowledging a contact from a customer is, of course, only the first step towards success.

Residents need to be convinced that, having reported an issue, it has been remedied.

……..& there the York Council still has a huge amount to do to improve its reputation!

 

Labour lose some influence on York Council – alternative approach proving illusive

As expected, the balance of power on many York Council committees swung away from Labour at a York Council meeting this evening.Lendal bridge notice

As required by law, the membership of scrutiny, planning and other committees will reflect the proportion of the seats held by the different parties on the Council.

The chairs of scrutiny committees will be taken by opposition Councillors.

Amongst the appointments, Andrew Waller will chair a committee that deals with Economic and City Development, Ann Reid will chair the Planning Committee and Nigel Ayre will head the influential Audit and Governance Committee.

But the key Cabinet posts will all continue to be held by Labour. Worryingly the Council chose not to reduce their delegated powers.

In effect this gives a huge advantage to the 8 full time Labour Councillors who will continue to hold the posts. 

York residents will expect the various groups on the Council to put the City first and come up with a workable system which will see the Council through to the local elections next May

It will need to be a transparent system which can also address the many problems which have increasingly dogged York in recent months.

Debts are mounting and time is running out

 

More 20 mph speed limits slipped through by Labour 3 days after losing York Council control.

Strong Police objections overruled in “behind closed doors” decision

Behind closed doors logo

Papers published today confirm that a Council official has nodded through the introduction of 20 mph speed limits on 3 more roads in the York area. The decision meeting took place on 21st October but no notice of the meeting was given to opposition Councillors.

The roads concerned are:

  • Heslington Road (part of)
  • Hospital Fields Road (full extent)
  • Broad Highway, Wheldrake (part of)

The Police objected to the proposals saying, in a strongly worded letter, that they would not be able to enforce the 20 mph limit.

 Their objection – which can be read by clicking here – points out that average speeds are below 30 mph anyway and that at least one of the roads is not “residential” in character.

In another, the Police question whether the change proposed might actually increase speeds near a school increasing, rather than reducing, accident potential

It is possible that the changes do have the support of local Ward Councillors.

But the expectation was that the new Council would immediately stop the practice of holding private “decision” meetings before subsequently publishing – sometimes days later – agendas and supporting papers.

Residents have a right to make additional representations on proposals if they chose. They can’t do so if a decision has already been taken.

The opposition group Leaders seem to have been out manoeuvred on this issue – and a similar one concerning TransPennine Express and Northern Rail franchises  where there is no sign of any opposition influence.

Opposition Councillors will need to raise their game quickly on the newly balanced Council.

York will expect open decision making and genuine consultation from now on.

York Council must seize opportunity for change

The proposals for tonight’s York Council meeting have been published

committeeThey show the opposition parties seeking to exploit the new influence given to them by York voters.
Not only are committee memberships being restructured to reflect the new balance on the Council (Labour loses its majority on these committees), but – rightly – scrutiny, planning and other major committees will now have opposition chairs.
This will place a welcome break on the powers of the residual Labour Cabinet.
However, in other respects, the proposals may seem by many to be either perverse (e.g. Cllr Merrett continuing as the Chair of the Local Plan working group) or a failure to get to grips quickly with the organisational change that the City needs.
Under the published proposals, the Labour Cabinet remains intact.
People who have failed will continue to be paid high salaries for a further 6 months of failure.
More seriously, unless an emergency motion is placed on the agenda at the last minute, there are no proposals to control the delegated powers that Cabinet members and officials have.
Poor, impulsive, decisions – often taken behind closed doors – are the root cause of the shambles that has engulfed the York Council over recent months.
By now, many residents would have expected the various parties to have reached a decision on how the City will be governed in the run up to the “all out” elections in May.
There is a parallel with the situation in 2007, when no party emerged from the local elections with an overall majority.
Then the Groups published an agreement indicating how they hoped to take the City forward.
Something similar should, by now, have been published by the new Council.
Unless such a plan emerges over the next few hours, electors may wonder why they bothered voting.

Speed checks – none done, some planned

The last Council meeting heard confirmation that no vehicle speed checks had been completed in west York since 20 mph signs started to be put up 12 months ago.

Elsewhere checks in the Bishopthorpe Road area have revealed that average vehicle speeds have not changed since the controversial £600,000 programme was introduced there.

In the West York area several examples of unlawful signs have been reported by residents.

Green Lane speed signs 2In Green Lane the speed limit signs indicate different speed limits on each side of the road.

There have been no prosecutions in York for vehicles exceeding the 20 mph limit.

The new Council is expected to abandon wide area 20 mph limits.

Spending taxpayer’s resources on removing the sign though might be considered to be a case of throwing good money after bad.

However if – as has happened elsewhere – accident rates increase in the 20 mph areas then removal may have to be considered.

Council abandon cycle hire project

bike hire

The Council’s much hyped plan to introduce a “Boris Bikes” style cycle hire scheme into York has been quietly abandoned.

The Council has realised that such a scheme would lose a lot of money.

A similar (commercial) scheme in the City 10 years ago failed after only a few months.

As was pointed out when the Council scheme was originally proposed, the lack of sustained all year round demand makes such schemes impractical.

The low cost of a new or second hand cycle is such that most regular users will chose to own a bike while tourists and visitors find that the compact nature of the city is more suited to walking.

Several cycle shops do offer hire bikes but these are mainly aimed at visitors wanting to explore the countryside around York. They involve picking up and returning the cycle to a shop.

Day of the Triffids – York Council fights back

day-of-the-triffids

The Council is to re-examine its contracts which cover spraying weeds on public highways.

The move, announced at the last Council meeting, comes in the wake of unprecedented levels of complaints about weed infested streets particularly in the west of the City.

At one point, even prominent City centre structures like Ouse Bridge were under attack.

Ouse Bridge 7th August 2014

Ouse Bridge 7th August 2014

It now appears that several streets – scheduled to be treated in a second wave of spraying – were missed.

During early October the Councils contractors walked the whole of the City spraying areas that needed attention.

They are also spraying round street furniture, poles etc.

The last Council meeting was told that the authority is considering letting a new spraying contract next year in conjunction with neighbouring authorities.

The Cabinet member was unable to explain why supervisory checks had not revealed – and remedied –the problem this summer.