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| Parking top of table for complaints |
Repairs and housing high on list
SERIOUS complaints about Town Hall services have almost doubled
in the last year, with parking problems causing most grief.
Figures released on Thursday show the number of complaints reaching
stage two of Islington Council’s complaints procedure has risen
from 5.2 per cent to 10 per cent.
A report from the council’s executive agenda states: “This
is principally due to high rates for parking, repair and benefit
complaints.”
Two of these services are contracted out to private companies –
National Car Parks, which is in charge of parking, and Caxtons,
responsible for council housing repairs.
Private finance initiative housing firm Partners for Islington which
is responsible for repairing council housing has come under fire
from Homes for Islington (HfI) which manages the housing stock.
Complaints against partners in the past two years have “increased
significantly” from 160 to 332. The executive report states:
“Hfl commented that this is higher than it should be.”
The number of complaints is primarily due to the extensive refurbishment
programme being undertaken by Partners.
Figures seen by the Tribune reveal how in 2003-4 there were 193
parking complaints, which leapt to 368 in 2004-5.
The number of overall written complaints to the council has dropped
from 6,509 last year to 3,640 this year.
Opposition Labour leader Councillor Catherine West said: “Something
must be going wrong if one in 10 complaints can’t be resolved
quickly and easily. Even the council admits the rise is largely
down to problems with the Lib Dems’ parking regime. Only a
few weeks ago we learnt that parking appeals in Islington have an
87 per cent success rate.”
Councillor George Allan, the Lib Dem’s customer focus chief,
said more parking tickets had been issued than in the previous year,
partly because of CCTV enforcement and the introduction of new controlled
parking zones. He added: “This increase gave us a backlog of
correspondence, which led to a number of complaints, and we took
prompt action to deal with this. |
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