Waiting times moving in the right direction

CALL waiting times have reduced to just over six minutes, Rotherham Council says but much longer delays are still being reported.

RMBC set a six-minute target earlier this year amid concern at some customers having to hang on the line for as long as an hour-and-a-half.

The average wait across all services was 6mins 8secs, according to the most recent council data covering the three months to the end of June.

But Cllr Rob Elliott, Rotherham Democratic Party, said: “It’s not my experience just recently, or a couple of my residents’, who’ve been on 20mins, 40mins.”

Cllr Ken Wyatt, Labour, added: “My experience is that we elected members are used as a default now when people can’t get through.

“Generally, we will answer the phone or call back. We do see people at surgeries.

“People tend to lead off with: ‘I’ve been trying to get through on the phone, but...’ and then you hear the issues.”

And Cllr Tim Baum-Dixon, Conservatives, said the complexities of the RMBC website meant he had spent 40 minutes trying to find the correct number to call for a constituent’s adult social care issue.

He added “I would say that 60 per cent or more of the things that come to us could have gone directly to the council.”

Council leader Cllr Chris Read attended a scrutiny meeting to answer questions on the subject last Wednesday.

He said: “We set ourselves a slightly arbitrary target of six minutes to get an improvement on where we were and we’ve got to six minutes, eight seconds.

“It is moving in the right direction; it’s just a little painful.

“I don’t think anybody thinks six minutes as an average is really good enough, or where we want to be, but I think it’s reasonable, given the pressures that we are facing at the moment.”

RMBC data shows that the call waiting times vary significantly depending on the time of day and week.

Cllr Read said: “Monday morning is one, for example, when people say: ‘I need to ring the council to pay my bill or whatever it is.

“Even though we maximise staff capacity at those times, they are the times when we get the really long waits.

“They are balanced out in the numbers by early evening times, when there’s relatively low demand.

“If people ring then, they get through pretty quickly, by and large.”

A call-back service was introduced for the housing department in the spring, with most callers being contacted within half an hour.

“It doesn’t work for everybody,” said Cllr Read. “But it does get you off the phone and stops you paying for the call, and waiting.”

The aim is for more departments to adopt the call-back system in the future.