Transforming Walsall to provide excellent services

Walsall Council is driving ahead with continuing, major transformation in how services are supported and delivered.

Walsall residents are benefiting from a programme with technology at its heart, focussing on making working processes simpler, reducing bureaucracy and giving staff better tools and support.

Backed by councillors and senior management, the authority's Transformation team plans major change and in one year over £1 million of savings have already been made with residents already benefiting from clear progress.

Staff are enthusiastic about placing customers right at the top of their agenda, as the council continues its stunning progress – recognised as one of the great local government success stories of recent years.

Just four years ago, Audit Commission inspectors refused to give Walsall a rating, but, such is the extent of progress continuing to be made, the council is now rated as a ‘three-star' or ‘good' authority and staff are working hard to offer excellent services and achieve the coveted ‘four-star' status.

Service areas across the authority are rising to the challenge. For example, Walsall 's environment services have rocketed to the top of table after languishing at the bottom of the league just a few short years ago.

Customer satisfaction surveys have shown us that increasing numbers of residents are satisfied with the services provided by the council – particularly waste management, libraries and leisure.

But the turnaround demonstrated by environment services is remarkable. W hen Government watchdogs came to Walsall five years ago they found some struggling services with no prospect of them getting better. The inspection team effectively slapped a ‘zero' rating on a major chunk of the council.

Today, after masses of hard work, things are much better and the Audit Commission has awarded the services a maximum four out of four rating and rates them as among the best in the country.

The authority has 10 clear priorities to achieve its vision of excellence:

• Ensure a clean and green borough
• Make it easier for people to get around
• Ensure all people are safe and secure
• Make our schools great
• Make Walsall a healthy and caring place
• Encourage everyone to feel proud of Walsall
• Make it easier to access local services
• Strengthen the local economy
• Listen to what local people want
• Transform Walsall into an excellent local authority

Dovetailing with ‘transformation' is the council's ‘Improving the Customer Experience' initiative, which brings together high-level representatives from customer-facing service areas across the organisation who look at how Walsall can change the way it works to make sure that residents are as satisfied as possible in their dealings with the authority.

Major changes are taking place under the ‘transformation' banner and they are improving the way Walsall Council operates.

Take the new contact centre, for example, which has seen the switch board and ‘Street Pride' environment help desks merged and relocated into modern refurbished accommodation in December last year with ambitious plans for expansion.

Each individual complaint can be monitored so the council can see where trends develop. This is a vital facility as more people are now using telephones to contact the council compared to four years ago. Back then 59,043 people had their call logged. In the 12 months to March this year an amazing 530,059 calls were made to the switch board and contact centre.

For those customers who prefer face-to-face contact, more than 250,000 citizens have found help and advice with a smile at Walsall 's bright and airy First Stop Shop , which is making it easier for people to access council services.

And Walsall Council is taking the First Stop Shop to the people, with plans well advanced for a new £150,000 ‘First Stop Bus', which will provide a mobile access point for the authority's services that will visit a series of regular contact points across the borough.

Transformation is changing things elsewhere in the council, with the council website highlighted in the top 30 of a national survey carried out by industry experts of more than 450 local government sites in the country.

Intranet pages have been restructured and the human resources team now has its own online intranet portal.

Through this, staff can view and change their own personal information. Another benefit of the new online processes is the support they give to the drive to reduce days lost due to sickness.

Great strides have been made under transformation, but we hope with a new Chief Executive and new Leader much more will follow