Better reports and answering ambition
Royal Borough: Hope residents can be borough’s eyes and ears
Improvements to a system for reporting issues in the Royal Borough would allow residents to become the ‘eyes and the ears of the council’, a councillor has argued.
At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday evening at York House in Windsor, council leader Simon Werner outlined the five main priorities in the Council Plan, which runs from 2024-2028.
These include putting the authority ‘on a strong financial footing to serve the borough effectively’, a ‘cleaner, greener, safer and more prosperous borough’, and ensuring that youngsters have a ‘great start in life and access to opportunities through to adulthood’.
Making sure people live independent and healthy lives ‘in supportive communities’ is another priority, alongside ensuring there is a ‘high performing council that delivers for the borough’.
Cllr Richard Coe (Lib Dem, Riverside) felt that improvements to the council’s ‘Report it’ system were missing from the plan.
The ‘Report it’ system can be used to report various issues including potholes, noise, missed bin collections and street cleaning.
He said: “One of the ways our residents obviously engage with us is via complaining and one of the really good routes to that is the ‘Report it’ system.
“I’d really like to see that strengthened to appear in the plan, specifically that we’re going to improve the ‘Report it’ system. If we have this working really well, then the residents will be the eyes and ears of the council.”
The authority should be able to reduce the time it spends on emails and dealing with complaints, Cllr Coe added.
“It should save officer and councillor time, reduce costs and result in a better service to residents.”
Cllr Coe said the system needs to be ‘much more user friendly’.
“I know officers spend quite a lot of time dealing with the reports from Fix My Street that don't necessarily interface brilliantly with council systems,” he said.
“So, the answer to that is to make our systems more attractive than third-party systems.”
Outlining suggested improvements, Cllr Coe said: “Rather than just residents submitting their report into the ether, and it sort of disappears, they actually get feedback from it, perhaps emails or texts tracking their complaint or their issue, and what’s happened about it.
“So that they feel that we are actually listening to them, and not just they tell us stuff and then nothing happens.”
Cllr Joshua Reynolds (Lib Dem, Furze Platt) echoed Cllr Coe’s call, saying he reported a blocked drain in his ward, and only received an email stating the job had been completed five weeks after it had been done.
Cllr Werner agreed with the point, adding that improvements to the reporting system fit in with both the cleaner, greener and the high performing council priorities.
“It’s definitely something that Stephen [Evans, chief executive], in consultation with myself, will be bringing front and centre in the corporate plan as we make those last changes,” Cllr Werner added.