Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council

Our Performance

Dudley Council is committed to making sure that local people get the best possible quality public services and are given every opportunity to realise their potential. We recognise and value the diversity of backgrounds, skills and needs within the borough and work hard to respond to these.

We aim to serve the people of Dudley Borough fairly and efficiently so we can improve the quality of life for everyone.

As Dudley Council, we will:

Listen to what local people say
Respond to what local people tell us
Be accountable for our performance
Provide value for money

There are six key themes, which meet the aspirations of the Council’s overall vision ‘Local People Matter’. It clearly sets out the key priorities, objectives and targets for each theme and it's local impact.

Council Themes:

Caring Matters
Environment Matters
Learning Matters
Regeneration Matters
Safety Matters
Quality Service Matters

The Revenues Service is committed to the principals of Best Value and Continuous Improvement and aims to give the most cost effective and efficient service possible. We will listen, respond, be accountable and provide value for money responding to the ‘Quality Service Matters’ key theme within the Council’s overall vision and helping to ‘create a prosperous Borough’ in line with priorities of the Community Strategy 2005-2020.

Revenues Mission Statement:

‘To deliver high quality services that are customer focused and give value for money’

To view the current Council Plan:

View the Council Plan.

Responding to customers

We are committed to providing the best possible service, and have made the following changes as a result of your feedback.

YOU SAID……..	WE RESPONDED……..
We needed some helpful narrative on bills which draws peoples attention to who to contact if in difficulty.	By adding an extra line on the bill making clearer reference to our contact details.
Information concerning Council Tax appeal procedures needs to be clearer.	By reviewing and updating the bill explanatory notes and Council Tax web site
We need to make it easier for you to get through on the phone.	Investing in new telephone technology and looking internally at how the call centre is supported to improve this area of our service.
You wanted more convenient ways to contact us.	· By making more services accessible out of hours by the use of on-line internet forms. · By extending our telephone call centre opening hours from 9.00am to 8.30am.
We needed to do more to advertise available discounts and exemptions.	By developing more information on our Internet site, running an annual take-up campaign in newspapers and giving information to community organisations to help those that they represent.
Wording on one of our letters was misleading.	By updating the Direct Debit reversal letter wording to include ' if you have paid within last 7 days ignore letter.
We should consider introducing ‘type talk’ for the deaf person to be able to contact us more easily	By investigating the possibility. This is due to be implemented during 2007-08
The arrangements for coming to the Council to speak to a member of staff to resolve an issue were unclear"	By reviewing our policy and issuing clear instructions to all of our staff to use when a customer wishes to speak to a member of staff on a face-to-face basis.
Failure of some internal procedures had caused you inconvenience.'	By conducting a full internal review of the incident and amending several procedures where necessary'.

We are also currently carrying out a full review of all documentation sent by Revenues. This is taking place during 2007-08 and includes collecting your comments and suggestions. If you have any feedback on this or any other aspect of our service please contact us.

Putting things right

In the year 2006-2007 the Revenues service received 15 formal complaints, 99% of which were dealt with within timescales (see our Customer Charter) and to the satisfaction of the complainant. During the same time period we received 6 compliments about the level of service given. During this same year we dealt with over 265,000 telephone calls and items of correspondance.

Cost of Our Service

Please see attachment (Council Tax Collection Statistics).