Councillors have clashed over whether council offices are open and operating face-to-face services.
The Green deputy leader of the council Hannah Clare accused the Conservatives of “misleading” residents by saying that people could not access Brighton and Hove City Council services in person.
Councillor Clare spoke out as the Conservatives brought a motion to a meeting of the full council last night (Thursday 21 July) raising concerns about customer satisfaction and calling for a “return to in-person services”.
Councillor Clare said: “I would like to inject some truth into this debate. I’m not sure if the Conservative group are maliciously misleading people about services on offer or if they’re just not paying attention.
“Either way, Brighton customer experience centre has been open since September 2021, and Hove customer experience centre has been open since April 2022.
“By continuing to say face-to-face customer service is not on offer, the Conservative group are misleading the public and failing the people they claim to care about the most.
“People keep seeing claims from the Conservatives that they can’t access services when they can.
“The best way to support people who need to visit council services face to face is by telling people they can, rather than claiming they can’t.
“I know because I regularly visit. You can just turn up at Hove and Brighton customer experience centre, and you can speak to someone.
“If the person there is not able to help you, and nine times out of ten they can, then they will contact the team that can or will support you to access the digital form of what they can do to help resolve the query.”
Councillor Clare said that she visited the parking services office on Wednesday and found it “buzzing with work” with the majority of desks occupied. She said that she had “every trust” that those working elsewhere were doing so to “the best of their ability”.
Conservative councillor Alistair McNair called for a return to pre-pandemic performance levels, when 15 per cent of meetings took place face to face, adding that none did last year.
He cited a customer insight report that indicated that just 57 per cent of council customers were satisfied with the service they received, which he described as “no ringing endorsement”.
Councillor McNair said: “Residents want the human touch. Email and online forms are cold. There are a lot of plans to improve the council website and digital offering. Fine, as long as they work.
“Very little emphasis is on encouraging residents, our most vulnerable residents, to meet with council staff.”
Another Conservative councillor Anne Meadows said that residents had told her that the council was not “open for business”.
She said: “I have that from officers themselves. While waiting on the phone to make an appointment for one of my vulnerable residents, I had time for a cup of tea.
“When I finally got to speak to an officer, I was told: ‘We don’t do face-to-face meetings. That is policy.’ That wasn’t too long ago.
“As far as I am aware, that has not changed. For me, housing is a key service for so many reasons.
“Despite assurances from the director of housing and Green councillors, our service is not open and it is not happening for so many vulnerable residents in our city.
“We still need face-to-face meetings for those people who do not have other means of access to our services and that is not happening.”
Labour councillor Daniel Yates said: “We cannot afford to exclude some by moving to all online services as we know all too well.
“Not all residents are comfortable with non-face-to-face route and they’ve already suffered the forced closure of customer services points in the last couple of years.”
Councillor Yates said that the council had invested in Hove Town Hall’s customer service centre ten years ago, improving satisfaction resulting in a “great outcome for residents”.
My own experience of dealing with fed up officers who shout resentfully, cut legal corners & bully me this year and of trying to get cllr help has left me feeling unsafe and shocked at how much power to behave like a rogue state behind the scenes officers seem to have.
Cllr oversight is generally flabby in all Parties, obsessed as they are with each other & playing verbal volleyball like kids in playgrounds.
The inmates are still running the asylum.
One example of services not being up to standard is the parking office, and the comment in this article from Councillor Hannah Clare that the parking office is ‘buzzing with work’ is not helpful. The staff may be at their desks but the council’s front desk for dealing with parking issues has been closed for some time.
We either have to deal with parking issues online or there’s a limited (mornings only) phone line service where you’ll be lucky to get through.
Parking charges rake in money for the council and yet they are only interested in collecting that money, rather than in offering a helpful service for residents.
If, for example, you have friends or family wanting to visit for the weekend and they can only come by car, then you need day-rate visitor parking vouchers for your parking zone. Despite these costing about £4 each it can take a week to get them delivered – and with no opportunity to just go and pick some up.
In my road if your friends instead try and pay to park in a metered bay then that costs £2.95 for two hours, and then you have to move the vehicle to another street before you can pay for a further two hours. Apart from the hassle of endlessly moving the vehicle the visitors could end up paying more than £20 per day. (And where are the park and ride schemes?)
I had another situation where my van broke down and I need that for work. So when it was in the garage I had a courtesy vehicle which I then tried to park near my house without a permit, with the constant worry that I’d get a ticket. I used parking vouchers until they ran out, and in the end I spent nearly £200 on parking fees, in addition to the residents parking permit I’d already paid for.
So it was a very stressful time, the council were benefiting from my misfortune, and here’s me on a very low income.
Running basic services should be the number one priority for any council but this lot just seem to want to turn these issues into a squabble between the political parties. It’s so frustrating for us residents to see the city run so badly.
Billy
A lot of good comments from you.
Now reference to your broken vehicle, this is where it falls down flat. You’ve paid for a parking permit, I think it shouldn’t be attached to the vehicle itself but to the address.
Billy, you should be able to temporarily transfer your normal permit across in this situation with help from the council. Of course, as you mentioned, it’s not easy to get in touch though.
Yes, there’s no explanation about this on the council website and the box you tick to do this didn’t work when I tried to set some dates.
But I have since (at the third attempt) managed to register my temporary vehicle registration plate, but only for a two week period.
I understand that they allow you up to three of these two week transfer periods.
The process has still cost me a lot of money in the meantime, with me effectively paying twice for parking – despite only ever having one vehicle at any one time.
The idea of service and civic pride in Brighton and Hove is long forgotten, especially under the dead hand of ‘Boris’ MacCafferty
Not the tories lying again