Obstacles for public contacting BCP Council, claim councillors

PUBLIC contact with BCP Council is still proving difficult with a merry go round of automated devices, according to councillors.

Talbot and Branksome Woods councillor Michael Brooke claimed that some people are spending 30-45 minutes on the phone before giving up, writes Trevor Bevins of the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

He said he was worried that the council was not putting enough effort or finance into improving the situation.

“One of the big problems we have at the moment is the interface between the council and the public in terms of communication, something I raised several months ago and things don’t seem to be getting any better," he told a meeting of the audit and governance committee.

“We have residents who are contacting us and it’s taking them half an hour to 45 minutes and they get no answer on the phone, or they get caught up in a loop where they are being asked to press a button or a particular number.

"All it does is tell them to keep pressing that number and they can’t get out of it, so they can’t actually communicate with the council.

"It is very much a reputational risk relating to IT and getting services right."

He added: “The public expect to be able to talk to their council and at the moment don’t seem to be able to.”

Committee chair Cllr John Beesley shared the frustration, saying: “I have been questioning exactly those points because the reputational risk is very real and very present.

"I think most ward members over the last period have received similar criticisms which do need to be urgently addressed.

“We are quite a long way off the mark at the moment."

Cllr David Brown said his concern was that all ward councillors were getting calls from people not being able to contact the council – yet the authority’s statistics suggested there was not much of a problem.

“I’m wondering if this is an issue which the systems, for whatever reason, are not picking up,” he said.