To ensure residents get a better service from Ealing Council

Liberal Democrats have launched the idea of a Customer Charter to ensure residents get a better service from Ealing Council.

Councillors Andrew Steed and Gary Malcolm say they have heard complaints from residents that they contact the Council and they do not get a reply to their email or phone calls.

Councillor Harvey Rose, who deals with a lot of local planning matters, complains that people get no feed back when they report planning infringements.

Councillor Gary Malcolm said, “I deal with a lot of residents who are annoyed when they are wrongly given parking tickets. Residents should be treated like humans and not as a problem.”

Some of the details relating to the charter are as follows:

• Consult more residents and users on local issues as many are missed out
• Answer correspondence more promptly and tell telephone operators to give their names
• Parking Attendants to use hand-held computers so they can detect if a car owner has a permit instead of fining residents who then have to dispute the parking ticket
• A greater share of Council monies to be agreed by the local community instead of 99.99% being dictated by Ealing centrally
• When failings occur, Council staff and councillors should be required to explain themselves.
  
  

April 13, 2010