Trying to get in touch with Camden Council…

• COMMUNICATIONS with our council are becoming increasingly problematic.

Most now require internet access and or the use of a smartphone. So far as I am aware Camden Council has no figures for what proportion of its residents are digitally excluded.

Even when you have access you find huge problems. To give some recent personal examples, I needed to book online a visitor’s parking permit for our “carer”. The site was not working but had a note “contact your support team” with no indication as to how.

Phone calls later I got an assurance a PCN, penalty charge notice, would not be issued. I tried to get a large-print version of a consultation document and spent 30 minutes on the phone with no success.

While waiting you are rarely told what number you are in the queue. My GP practice has an automatic system whereby they will ring you back.

For people with hearing impairment there are speech-to-text systems which can be used in face-to-face contacts or on the phone. We even use the translation system. Rare, if at all available in the council. Try contacting staff on a Monday or Friday. Many are “working from home”.

It is not just officers who are hard to contact though. I emailed the council leader’s office five weeks ago in relation to disability matters and still await a substantive response. Suggestions for improving communications are just ignored.

These failures are not, of course, just confined to disability issues. It took me some six emails to get a refusal from a senior officer to come to Queen’s Crescent to see for himself the devastation and neglect his department had caused over the past five years, including serious risks to residents.

It seems the only way to get a response is to use the Freedom of Information Act whereby there is a legal requirement to respond.

MICK FARRANT, NW5