Burnley Council services running smoothly according to report

A report highlighting the following successes was presented to the council’s scrutiny committee:

• 100% of major planning applications and 86% of minor applications were processed in good time.

• The number of household waste collections that were missed was on target, with 37 bins missed for every 100,000 collections. The target is 40 or fewer.

• Liberata was brought in to take over the running of some services from the council at the start of 2016. These included customer services, revenue and benefits, and environmental health.

In the contact centre, Liberata met its target to answer 80% of calls promptly.

Liberata's benefits team also achieved its targets; against a target of nine days, it took less than five days on average to process new benefits or a change of circumstance.

One area for improvement highlighted in the report is the length of time customers had to wait for a face to face service in the contact centre. On average customers waited for 12 minutes, against a target of 10.

The partnership with Liberata was part of Burnley Council’s strategic plan for maintaining essential public services while meeting ever-increasing financial challenges.

Coun. Sue Graham, the council’s executive member for finance and performance management, said: “The service the council provides remains good despite the significant budget pressures. Occasionally we don’t always get it right.

"The council is listening to people’s feedback, particularly about recycling collections, and, where necessary, we will change how we do things to improve service quality and efficiency.”