Council's plans for even better customer service and value for money

The Royal Borough is to forge ahead with plans that will bring even better customer service and value for money for local residents.

After four months of consultation with staff and detailed working with elected members the council's business improvement model was given the green light by cabinet on Thursday 24 November. It will bring about a new approach to how the vast majority of residents' queries are handled so that more people can expect an answer in one go - 'done in one'.

The new model is based on the simple premise of bringing together staff from a number of services who deal directly with residents rather than being spread across different directorates. It is designed to ensure the council can continue to deliver top quality services with low council tax.

A new operations directorate will be set up at the beginning of the year to provide an umbrella team of frontline staff from services as wide ranging as streetcare, highways, public protection, revenues and benefits, registrars and the customer contact centre.

These services will transfer in a carefully managed way, with the aim of being completed by April 2012 so there will be minimal change-over disruption for both residents and staff. The end result will be a quicker, easier way for residents to get answers to their queries - the aim is for 95% of all queries to be dealt with in one go by 2013 (currently 71%).

The business improvement model will also deliver savings for local taxpayers, projected to be in the region of £3.6m by 2015.

Cllr M J Saunders, cabinet member for corporate transformation, described the business improvement model as 'rooted in people' - residents who demanded and deserved the best possible services and staff who were skilled, talented and committed to delivering those services.

He said: "The change in the way we work is critical to satisfy residents' needs in the way they want and at the price they want to pay. The new model was tried and tested in our resources directorate where we proved it works in delivering a more efficient service for residents - including, a 10% reduction in costs and a considerable reduction in the time people have to wait.

"We fully expect the new model will deliver similar improvements across a much wider range of services when the new directorate is up and running."

Cllr David Burbage, council leader, said: "The change in the way we work will help us take forward our commitment to putting residents first and delivering more for less."

Unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve business improvement without an impact on the number of posts in the council. Sadly, there are around 70 people placed 'at risk' in the current financial year with 31 redundancies from that group. In addition a number of vacant posts will be removed.

Front line services from the council's other two directorates - children's services and adult and community services - are undergoing their own change and improvement programmes and will join the wider council model at a later stage.

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