Lambeth Council wants to spend £220,000 on redesigning the Customer Services Centre in Brixton to make a saving of £45,000 in the next financial year.
The Customer Services Centre opened in April 2018 as part of the Your New Town Hall project. Lambeth still claims that the project will save residents £4.5M per year.
The “deletion of posts” (aka redundancies) will help to make the saving. The remaining shortfall will come from existing capital budgets.
Cllr Andy Wilson, the Cabinet Member for Finance and Performance, has been asked to sign off the Redesigning Face to Face Customer Service in the Civic Centre report.
The new facility was closed on 23rd March when lockdown was called.
The report claims:
“This has provided an opportunity to review and transform the face to face customer service offer”
Despite being operational for only two years, the report for Cllr Wilson identifies many design flaws in the new building:
“Many customers found the space too open and too noisy. Many also found it confusing and difficult to understand where to obtain the help they needed.
The staff themselves often felt unsafe. There have been regular incidents in the service and the open plan nature of the space meant that incidents were extremely visible to staff . Sound would echo up through the building.”
The plan is now to shift support online where appropriate. The Brixton Hill building will run a skeleton service for those without online access.
The report describes this as:
“Removing the triggers for conflict.”
Good luck to anyone who tries to contact Lambeth Council by telephone. I still think a decentralised service would better serve those who need it most.
Stop waisting money .Spend it on getting some buildings ready to take the homeless of the streets of Brixton .where they are safe
I had the misfortune of attending a wedding in the registry department in Feb. It was a total shambles. Had to line up at reception (ordered by helper) to just be pointed in the registry direction…..The wedding was booked for 11.15 and we were all waiting in a congested area for 45 minutes. The suite had been booked since early January but there was a mistake, a complete mess I would call it. The wedding took place behind closed doors, in a small dark room….Then the wedding had to happen again as the room originally booked was freel We were all sitting outside there waiting, and its glass so visually empty. The consequences were the venue/meal was all running late, cold food, disappointment and this was due to the incompetant staff in the reception, lack of training on the registry and total lack of co-ordination of the service. What an awful wedding day. A complaint was lodged to the Chief Exec and the head of registry and still awaiting a positive outcome… Money wasted, and other peoples money too.