{"id":289537,"date":"2020-12-09T16:45:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T06:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=289537"},"modified":"2020-12-10T22:10:59","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T12:10:59","slug":"council-targets-response-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2020\/12\/09\/council-targets-response-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Council Targets Response Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
South Burnett Regional Council will introduce uniform response times for customer service requests in 2021 when it adopts a new Customer Service Charter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
South Burnett Mayor Brett Otto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

December 9, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

Poor communications from Council are the single biggest source of complaints from residents, Mayor Brett Otto told Wednesday’s SBRC Standing Committee meeting.<\/p>\n

The Mayor made the comment during a lengthy discussion about a proposed Customer Service Charter to be considered at January’s General Meeting.<\/p>\n

The Charter will set maximum time limits for Council staff – and Councillors – to respond to customer requests, with the aim of improving service levels and making response times more uniform and predictable.<\/p>\n

The Mayor said he had noticed since he was elected in March that poor communication was at the root of most complaints about Council.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The lack of clear timeframes for getting a response from Councillors or staff caused annoyance and frustration for many residents.<\/p>\n

He believed this had not been a major issue prior to the 2008 Council amalgamation because the old Councils had been much smaller, had fewer staff and had to deal with fewer regulations.<\/p>\n

But during the past 12 years the South Burnett Regional Council’s bigger size and scope had built barriers between Council and the general community.<\/p>\n

Mayor Otto said he believed this was counter-productive, and the solution was to introduce a new policy that would ensure customers had their issues responded to in a uniformly prompt way.<\/p>\n

Debate over the new policy was largely focussed on the maximum time customers should be asked to wait for a response from staff or Councillors – two, five or 10\u00a0days.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several Councillors argued that in general, the shorter the time, the better.<\/p>\n

Against this, officers noted some requests Council received were highly technical and required a lot of background work to produce an adequate response.<\/p>\n

They suggested that a short response to tell customers that a more detailed response would be forthcoming in a set number of days might be a better procedure.<\/p>\n

Another issue was the volume of customer requests, with officers noting Council now receives about 15,000 a year (ie. between 50 and 60 every working day).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Responding to this volume of requests required a large amount of staff resources, so it was important to ensure any new system was properly resourced to meet any new customer service requirements.<\/p>\n

In the end – after almost an hour of discussion – Councillors voted to continue workshopping the policy to find a set of time frames that would suit most situations.<\/p>\n

A final version of the policy is now expected to be adopted early next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poor communications from Council are the single biggest source of complaints amongst residents, Mayor Brett Otto told Wednesday’s SBRC Standing Committee meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":257956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,3],"tags":[1131],"yoast_head":"\nCouncil Targets Response Times - southburnett.com.au<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Poor communications from Council are the single biggest source of complaints amongst residents, Mayor Brett Otto told Wednesday's SBRC Standing Committee meeting.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2020\/12\/09\/council-targets-response-times\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Council Targets Response Times - 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