‘YOUR ESTIMATED QUEUE TIME IS..EIGHT MINUTES’

...but one councillor reports being left hanging on the telephone for 45-50 mins

RESIDENTS calling their council are being kept waiting for more than eight minutes on average according to official figures – but councillors believe the reality is even worse.

Stoke-on-trent City Council’s call centre handled 88,483 calls between April and June this year, with the average queue time of eight minutes and 16 seconds – up from four minutes and 45 seconds in the previous quarter.

Officials say the increase in waiting times was due to the authority returning to ‘business as normal’ with the easing of coronavirus restrictions, and a surge in calls about annual council tax bills and reminders.

There were 24,257 more calls between April and June compared to the same period in 2020, when the first lockdown was in effect.

But members of the council’s corporate services overview and scrutiny committee questioned the accuracy of the average wait time figure, saying they regularly heard from residents who were having to wait far longer.

Councillor David Williams said: “I’ve got serious concerns about the data for wait times. I get calls from residents who tell me they’ve tried calling the council but they’ve not been able to get through to anyone.

“We were told at the last meeting that these figures don’t include abandoned calls. So if someone has been on hold for an hour or 45 minutes and then puts the phone down, then that isn’t included in these figures. So it’s misleading information.

“I’m sure everyone on the committee has had calls from residents on this issue. I’m getting calls about two or three times a week from people who can’t get through to the council.”

Councillor Jackie Barnes, below, said: “I don’t believe these figures. My own personal experience, I’ve been left waiting 45 or 50 minutes.

“I spoke to someone who said they had to hang up because their phone was running out of battery. They were trying to get through to the homeless team but they were waiting 37 minutes.”

Nick Edmonds, director of strategy and resources, told the committee that a more detailed report on call centre performance was being prepared, and would be presented at a future meeting.

The committee was also told that wait times could vary significantly between different council departments, and that more urgent calls were sometimes prioritised over others.

Mr Edmonds said that giving residents more ways of interacting with the councils – such as through digital channels – could help ease the pressure on the call centre.

He added: “It’s not just a case of getting more people in to answer the phones. It’s a more complex picture than that.”