Two local residents have contacted me this week to complain about a vandalised garage (pictured -
owned by the Council) on Bede Walk/Hexham Road and the Council's failure to sort it out.
You might think this is a minor issue, but rubbish has been building up outside this location making it an unttractive and unsafe eyesore, which is helping to make the whole area look run down.
The door to this particular garage has been bent out of shape and four tyres have been dumped outside.
The real bugbear for local residents is the fact that they have each individually contacted the Council a number of times to report the problem (as long ago as 25 August) and nothing has been done.
One resident got the following message from RBC's call centre via email TWICE:
'I apologise for the delay in the response to your enquiry.
I have passed your e-mail onto the garages department.
I have asked for them to respond to you directly.'
...and yet still nothing has been done.
I have real concerns about more and more public enquiries about Council services being handled by a corporate call centre.
I can imagine this concept is good in principle: it probably saves money and frees officers up to do other things, but is it worth it if the customer service goes down hill as a result?
Quite clearly the message phoned and emailed in by different residents about the garage issue on Bede Walk either didn't get passed on, or got lost in the system - and as a result failed to get actioned or prioritised. And If the message did in fact get passed on to the right officer, why did no one call the residents back?
Like my campaign to highlight problems reporting crime to the Police in Reading via the asb hotline, failure by RBC to respond to calls and emails made by residents to the Council's call centre and website makes those residents lose faith in the Council. It also makes them less likely to bother to call the Council again to report the issue. This is hardly a way to get people more involved in improving the local environment.
Whatever happened I'm in this particular case, now I'm involved it will hopefully now get sorted. That's not the point here though.
Why should residents be forced to raise these types of what would seem to be straightforward issues with their local councillors to get things done (out of pure frustration) rather than by one simple phone call or email to the Council?
I'll be raising this issue with RBC's new Chief Executive Michael Coughlin when I next get the chance as I read recently he's interested in improving customer service at RBC.
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