Website Feedback

What are the 'faces' for?

The 'faces' offer a simple way for you to rate a web page - happy, neutral or unhappy. This will help us to find out what works and what doesn't, and what needs to be improved. This is a new service and we hope that visitors to our website will use it to rate our web pages. Once we start receiving feedback we will publish the results here.

The service is provided by GovMetric and is also being used when customers contact us by telephone or in person.

What we do with your feedback

When you rate a page or service, we ask you to provide further information - this will help us to identify areas most in need of improvement, and it will also tell us where we are getting things right. We look at every comment we receive and try to act on them as soon as we can.

If we can make improvements through simple changes we will do this straightaway. However, sometimes the changes may require us to do quite a bit of work before we can put things right. Whenever we make any changes as a result of your feedback we will publish them here.

What we've changed so far in response to your comments.

This is just a selection of things that we have changed, updated or improved as a result of your feedback:

December/January

This period saw disruption to council services due to the snow and ice. You gave us a lot of feedback about our severe weather updates and schools closure page. We were able to use this feedback to continually improve our information and you responded with lots of positive comments.

Other feedback:

• You said: Our online payments system was slow with newer browsers.
  We did: We upgraded our systems and this issue has now been resolved.
• You said: The maps on the parking web pages weren't clear enough
  We did: We have uploaded new maps to replace the old ones.
• You said: School catchment maps were hard to find
  We did: We added a link to "School Designated Areas" in the main Schools and Colleges index.

October/November:

• You said: Add post codes to the Park and Ride page for sat nav users
  We did: We added the post codes and a note for sat nav users
• You said: A few of you reported that you couldn't find out how to renew a library book
  We did: We added the link to every library web page
• You said: You couldn't see the link to apply online for a school place
  We did: We made the link more prominent
• You said: There should be a phone number on the Pay Online page as an alternative way of paying
  We did: We added the number for our 24hr automated payments line
• You said: Why can't we see a list of listed buildings online?
  We did: We added a links to Maps Online to view individual buildings and to the English Heritage search facility
• You said: Wait times for telephone calls were too lengthy
  We did: We've implemented new software which helps us predict when more staff are required
• You said: Hold music was too loud
  We did: We turned it down
• You said: The automated telephone system for mixed recycling wasn't working correctly
  We did: We've amended the system and it now directs you straight through to RecycleBank

August/September:

• You said: 4 Marlow Road needed more images and content to show the facilities available.
  We did: We added a selection of new images on the facilities, and updated the Centre activities
• You said: There wasn't much information on our Visiting the Royal Borough page
  We did: We added some more content and made the link to the Visitor Information Website more prominent
• You said: You didn't know which bus you needed to get to your destination on our Bus Timetables page
  We did: We made the links to the Traveline journey planner and to Transport Direct more prominent
• You said: You wanted to see more images regarding the Bachelors Acre Play Area
  We did: We added a new image
• You said: You wanted to know how long it takes to process a Blue Badge Application
  We did: Details about timescales have been added
• You said: You couldn't find a link to renew a library book.
  We did: We added the link to 'renew my book' onto every library service webpage.
• You said: Waiting times in the Customer Service Centre for Council Tax and Housing Benefit were too long
  We did: We have improved our queuing systems so that waiting times have now been reduced.
• You said: Staff in our Reception were 'average'
  We did: We retrained the staff and updated our training programme
• You said: Messages on the telephone were not correct or misleading
  We did: We corrected the misleading information and added more clarification
• You said: Waiting times on the Benefits telephone line were too long
  We did: We have introduced more Benefits experts
• You said: We needed more multi-lingual people on the phones
  We did: We have made more people with different language skills available

And these are the areas that we are working on:

• You have given us lots of feedback, both positve and negative about our Leisure Centre web pages. Where we have been able to make simple changes we have done this straight away (e.g. 'what is a Junior?'). We will continue to review all your comments with a view to making some more improvements to these pages.

How do you rate this information/service?