Members of the public may ask questions or make statements at this meeting if they have given notice and provided the text to democraticservices.rye@northyorks.gov.uk no later than midday on Tuesday, 11 June 2024. Each speaker should limit themselves to 3 minutes on any item. Members of the public who have given notice will be invited to speak:
· at this point in the meeting if their questions/statements relate to matters which are not otherwise on the Agenda (subject to an overall time limit of 30 minutes);
· when the relevant Agenda item is being considered if they wish to speak on a matter which is on the Agenda for this meeting.
If you are exercising your right to speak at this meeting, but do not wish to be recorded, please inform the Chairman who will instruct those taking a recording to cease whilst you speak.
Minutes:
There was one question from a member of the public.
Question from Dinah Keal
When North Yorkshire Council was launched in Spring 2023, the Leader was quoted as saying that the new council 'would put local communities and people at the heart of everything it does'.
Why then has it become virtually impossible for members of the public in those communities to communicate with officers of NYC? As a town councillor and resident I have not only been on the receiving end of a system that is not fit for purpose and seems designed to actively avoid communicating with the public and have received complaints from local residents who find the new switchboard system either impossible to negotiate or deeply frustrating.
- for example - I have been contacted by a 75 year old who had attempted to enquire about a Blue Badge, but had given up when she got to the 'describe in three words' request, as she became flustered and couldn't find the words to reply. In what way is this system user-friendly - it just isn't.
- when calling myself, I was passed to two incorrect district 'hubs' before I finally got through to the correct office where the officer I needed to speak to is based, before being told by the receptionist that I couldn't speak to them and should email or 'submit my query via the portal'. And I quote 'it is more than my job is worth to put you through to a person'.
- even town council clerks struggle to contact the officers that they need to speak to with specific community issues. Everything it seems - even the simplest query that could be answered in two minutes on the phone - now has to be reported through a faceless portal.
So can I ask - is North Yorkshire intent on diminishing democracy even further than it already has done through the creation of the unitary authority, by making it virtually impossible for residents to communicate with officers of the council or even speak to the correct department to deal with their query?
Or will you commit to completely overhauling and improving your switchboard/customer enquiries department so that it enables residents to communicate with their council in a straightforward, simple and effective manner?
Response from Julie Gillett, Head of Customer Experience and Excellence
When North Yorkshire Council was launched in Spring 2023, the Leader was quoted as saying that the new council 'would put local communities and people at the heart of everything it does'.
North Yorkshire Council is committed to placing the customer at the heart of everything we do and improving our customer’s experience. We are sorry to hear that some of our customer experiences have not been positive, but we are committed to improving this, so we are grateful for the feedback.
The new telephone system provides one number for customer and then routes the calls to the relevant service area. As we brought 8 councils together, we need to route calls to the appropriate team who are mostly still operating on a geographical basis as a result of different inherited systems from eight different councils. The majority of the time the system works well but occasionally we do need to transfer calls to ensure the customer speaks to an adviser with access to the necessary system. If the few words used by the customer to describe what they are looking for is not recognised, then the call will transfer to an advisor who will help them.
We recognise that we are still in the early stages of our customer experience improvement journey, and our approach will evolve further for us to achieve our ambition for customer excellence. It should also be recognised that the scale of the new council has meant that we have been able to bring resilience and some improvements to this area already where some legacy councils had struggled to deliver the right level of customer service. We intend to build upon that with our plan to ensure that the customer experience is more positive more often. This will be supported by use of different customer channels, systems, reviews of processes, better use of data and equipping staff to handle a broader range of enquiries. It will ensure the council’s one front door is set-up to continuously improve as we put customers at the centre every step of the way.
It is also important to say that Council services have been going through re-structures and new teams have been brought together. Now the re-structures have largely been completed council services will continue to forge better links at the local level in communities and through parish and town councils going forward.
Mrs Keal then asked the following supplementary question:
Could North Yorkshire Council
a. remove the “explain what you want in 3 words” from the answering system? And
b. provide structure charts on the NYC website, so town and parish clerks can easily find out who they need to speak for responses to queries?
Julie Gillett, Head of Customer Experience and Excellence, thanked Mrs Keal for her feedback and suggestions.