It can be almost satisfying to see large organizations take little steps in a sensible direction when one has been prodding them in that direction for a while, so it is worth acknowledging that last Friday our council hosted a number of business influencers to a meeting seeking better ways to do things for the ratepayer.
As Chairman Mao once famously said, “The thousand mile march begins with the first step” and they have taken it. Good on them but there is still a long way to go.
It was pleasing to hear that complaints over the phoning in system have been heard and that someone is working on having the 0800 council number set up so that it can be rung from a cell phone. Seeing as most enquiries come from builders on sites that have yet to have a full time landline this is very sensible, (to the point that one wonders why they didn’t have this facility in the first place).
We look forward to this and hope that a more even spread of staff who actually do return calls might follow. Next step will be getting hold of the right person with the right answers without listening to all that recorded stuff.
Many of the things that council annoy their customers with are not that hard to fix, so it is pleasing to see this new attitude and it is hoped that more staff do see ratepayers as customers rather than victims.
It will undoubtedly take a long sustained campaign to rectify some deep seated behaviours but it was good to see that there is a will among some of the more enlightened of council’s senior managers, (notably ones who have come from private companies), to get processes in place that will support an improvement to our economy.
Better, faster, simpler processes to support projects of a higher quality standard, both visually and in relation to environmental performance, is a sure fire way to lift our economic performance and I support these first few steps by council and hope they gain traction to benefit us all.
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