26 July 2014

New complaints process being put in place

Remember the old days when you called your Council and told them that there was dumped rubbish in your street, or the bin hadn't been emptied or something else was bothering you that you thought could be done more efficiently? And what happened?  The girl who answered the phone (and still does) was polite and confident and told you she would pass the information onto the best person for the enquiry and the chances were you never heard from them again and what you enquired about may or may not have been done. The only way you knew this was from your own personal observation. After you had called a few times and nothing had happened you either gave up or contacted your local councillor. They were often able to get the job done as they knew the right person in the organisation to talk to.

What council is now developing is a system that logs the enquiry, responds to it in a timely manner with detail about how the matter will be investigated and fixed, if needed, and will let you know when the job is completed. It will even let you know if for some reason it can't be completed in the given time frame why it hasn't been done and well it will be done by. Sound perfect. In the past few weeks I have had more than the usual number of such complaints these ranging from the CEO failing to return a call, being given the wrong information about bin collection days and a staff member not getting back to a resident in the time frame he gave. Unley can certainly do it better and is working toward this; I just hope it still leaves something for Councillors to do as this is often when we get to meet residents and make the personal contact that people want.

2 comments:

  1. I had reason to contact Council this week about hard rubbish being dumped in my street. This was handled very competently and the rubbish gone by the next day. All people involved (except the rubbish dumper) are to be congratulated for their prompt and efficient service.

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  2. it is my hope that everyone will have the same experience that you did, well done as well to the staff.

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