Concern Newport Council’s customer service issues are linked to home working

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More council staff in Newport should return to the office to improve customer service levels, a councillor has suggested.

Cllr Mark Howells said the city council was “struggling” with customer service and responding to queries in an “acceptable” timeframe.

“We hear constantly that nobody answers the phone or responds to emails,” he said. “It’s a recurring theme among residents.

“Often the comment we hear is that everybody’s working from home.”

Cllr Dimitri Batrouni, the council leader, said working from home “doesn’t necessarily impact on customer service” but accepted the council needs to “up our game”.

“Like you, I heard those concerns from residents,” he told Cllr Howells at a meeting on Tuesday, adding the local authority had spent £350,000 on “revamping” services.

“We’re committed to delivering that,” Cllr Batrouni added, explaining calls to the contact centre were increasingly complex in nature.

Last October, council officers said ongoing work to improve customer services at the council would take place over an 18-month period.

The following month, a report showed callers to the council’s phone service for council tax enquiries typically spent more than 23 minutes on hold.

The figures, which Cllr Howells at the time branded “disappointing”, showed the council missed its waiting time targets for that tax enquiry service, as well as its main contact centre and its Welsh-language line.