CABINET MEMBER QUESTIONS - CABINET MEMBER FOR Tackling Inequality & Resident Services
To put questions to the Cabinet
Member regarding areas of her Portfolio that are the responsibility
of the main Scrutiny Committee:
Local welfare programmes:
-
Revenue and benefits;
-
Council Tax Reduction Scheme;
-
Welfare advice;
-
Haringey Here to Help;
-
Ethical debt policy
Your Council:
Minutes:
The
Panel undertook a question and answer session with Cllr Chandwani,
the Cabinet Member for Tackling Inequality & Resident Services.
The following arose during the discussion of this agenda
item:
- The
Panel questioned waiting times and queried what strategic
performance data was collected in regard to the call centre. In
response, the Cabinet Member set out that the call centre was not
the only place that dealt with people’s issues. The call
centre was the front door for 15 key service areas but that the
other 85 or so service areas were dealt with in a different way. It
was noted that the time spent waiting on hold would therefore
depend on what the issue or service involved was. The Committee was
advised that call centre staff were trained to deal with 90% of the
issues that would arise and that there would always be some complex
multi-service issues that were perhaps not best responded to
through a call centre setting. The Cabinet Member advised that the
three service areas that received the greatest number of calls were
housing repairs, council tax and parking.
- The
Panel also sought clarification about what the average time taken
on a call was and whether comparative data was known about how well
Haringey did in relation to call answering in comparison to
neighbouring boroughs. The Cabinet Member set out that in order to
make a meaningful comparison, it would be necessary to compare like
for like and that, for example, most other authorities did not deal
with housing enquiries directly through the ‘front
door’ call centre. Officers advised that in relation to call
answering times, the latest performance information up to
11th November was that:
·
40% of calls were answered within 30
seconds
·
61% of calls were answered within 5
minutes
·
70% of calls were answered within 10
minutes
- Officers commented that there was generally a single digit
percentage of calls that hit an hour in terms of call waiting
times. The call centre received around 8k calls a week and 70% of
those were answered within 10 minutes. Officers advised that in
general waiting times could vary significantly, particularly when
dealing with complex multi-level issues that related to
residents’ welfare. Staff were encouraged to engage with
these difficult complex problems, as it was recognised that there
were residents with a high level of need.
- Officers advised that in relation to neighbouring boroughs, 92%
of calls were answered and that this was broadly in line with other
neighbouring local authorities.
- The
Committee sought clarification about whether, when people were
on-hold, that they were waiting for a person with specialist
knowledge to become free or whether calls were handled in a more
generalised manner. In response, the Committee was advised that the
customer service staff had a main specialist service area, along
with two other smaller areas of knowledge. This meant that calls in
relation to a particular service area were dealt with by specific
staff and that there could be a high waiting time ...
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