We aim to provide high-quality services to all our customers. As a council, we deliver a wide range of services and aim to deliver and develop services to meet customers’ needs. Below are the standards that we aim to meet when dealing with our customers.

Letters, emails and online forms

When replying to letters, emails and online forms these are the standards we should meet:-

• We should acknowledge all letters or emails within 2 working days and give an estimated time when the customer can expect a full response
• We should reply to all letters and emails within 10 working days
• If it’s not possible to meet this 10 working days deadline, then we should you to explain why and when a reply can be expected
• In order to speed things up we may contact you by telephone or by email instead
• We will aim to avoid jargon and use plain English to make it easy to understand and helpful
• We will give our contact details – name, department, telephone number and email address so that you can contact us easily if you need to

Telephone calls

When taking telephone calls we aim to :-

• try to answer as many calls as possible within 5 rings
• answer all calls within a maximum of 10 rings
• greet callers with: Welcome: “Good morning/afternoon, section name..., persons name and...how can I help you?...”
• take personal responsibility for the call and ensure that any follow up actions are taken
• deal with all callers politely and courteously
• respond to voicemail messages within 1 working day

How to make a complaint

If you feel we have not met the above standards when dealing with you and would like to make a complaint please see our complaints page.

Date Updated: 04/11/09