Customer care
We are dedicated to providing excellent customer care and have many systems in place to ensure that remains the case. This page shows our approach, what you can do if you consider we are failing in our service to you and how you can provide your views on our service. If you require any additional information click on the link below on ways you can get in touch with us.
Citizens Charter
We regularly publish our Citizen's Charter which outlines all of our Service commitments and targets which cover such things as how rapidly we will reply to your letters or answer the telephone. The key customer care standards are:
We will deal with urgent matters on either the day that you report them to us or the next working day. On other matters we will start investigating your complaint within two working days.
If you send us a letter, fax or email we will reply to you with a full response within 10 working days. In some cases we may not be able to provide you with a full answer within 10 working days because of the nature of the matter under investigation. In these cases we will give you as much information as we can in 10 days and let you have a full reply as soon as possible thereafter.
When you telephone we aim to answer within 5 rings
Find out more about the Citizen's Charter
Customer feedback and complaints
We value your feedback as it gives us a chance to see where things are going wrong and what we are doing right and to continuously improve the service we provide to you.
Has someone provided a good service?
We all like to be told we are doing a good job and if you think any of our staff has been particularly helpful, why not let us know.
Email us at esd@wandsworth.gov.uk
Find out what customers have been saying about the service.
How your suggestions have improved our service?
We our very pleased to receive suggestions for improvements to our service from you and have in the past few years initiated many improvements such as -
- A language library of Food Hygiene videos held at the Tooting Library.
- Contact cards with explanatory translations are left if we call when customers are out.
- The creation of a useful numbers card for distribution to all customers.
- A new, detailed service specific request form on our webpages.
- Downloadable leaflets on our web pages.
- "What happens next" leaflets to keep our customers informed of how a complaint should progress.
- The creation of a fact pack giving information on bed bug infestation and how to prepare for a visit.
- Customer Surveys now contain the date of dispatch rather than the phrase dated as postmarked.
- Food Hygiene Training courses are now held in Urdu and Tamil as well as English.
- Officers now carry a small library of leaflets which they can distribute during inspections.
Complaints
How to make a complaint about the service you have received
Unfortunately, there are times when things go wrong. As part of our commitment to provide a high quality of service we are making sure we listen to your complaints. If you have a complaint about the way you have been treated or about the service you have received which could not be resolved by the officer concerned :-
Initially you can telephone or write to the Area Manager responsible for the service in question. They are :-
Frank Whittle
Housing and Grants on 020 8871 6129
Janine Avery/Helen Clark
Food Premises on 020 8871 7382
Sheila Brass
Health & Safety and Licensing on 020 8871 6959
Jill Phillips
Environmental issues including noise on 020 8871 6140
Les Eames
Trading Standards on 020 8871 6177
They can all be contacted by telephone on the numbers listed above or by email at esd@wandsworth.gov.uk
Unless the matter can be dealt with immediately, you will receive an acknowledgement within 5 working days and a written response within 10 working days.
Step 1
You should write to:
Head of Environmental Services and Community Safety Division
Technical Services Department
Environmental Services and Community Safety Division
PO Box 47095
SW18 9AQ.
Email: pcopeland@wandsworth.gov.uk
Unless the matter can be dealt with immediately, you will receive an acknowledgement within 5 working days and a written response within 10 working days.
Step 2
If you are not satisfied with the Head of Environmental Service's response you should write to:
Director of Technical Services
William G. Myers
Town Hall
Wandsworth High Street
SW18 2PU
Phone: 020 8871 6651 or email wmyers@wandsworth.gov.uk
He will send you an acknowledgement within 5 working days and a written response within 10 working days.
Step 3
If you are still dissatisfied you can contact:
Chief Executive
Gerald Jones
Town Hall
Wandsworth High Street
London
SW18 2PU
Phone: 020 8871 6001 or email gkjones@wandsworth.gov.uk
We hope it won't be necessary to go through all these steps but if you are still dissatisfied with our response you can write to the Local Government Ombudsman. The Ombudsman has a specific duty to investigate complaints against local councils, please note that where some complaints are concerned the ombudsman might not be able to investigate but he will advise you if this is the case. The ombudsman can be contacted at:
The Oaks
2 Westwood Way
Westwood Business Park
Coventry
CV4 8JB
Telephone (024) 7682 0000
To see more information about the Local Government Ombudsman visit www.lgo.org.uk
Mystery shopper
As part of our ongoing program of constantly striving to improve our customer service, we regularly hold 'mystery shopper' investigations.
Consultation
Part of our ongoing plan for improving our services is consulting the public. We will be listing here the consultations that have taken place or are due to take place in the coming months.
You can now register with us to receive alerts when consultations are coming up that you may want to get involved with.
 Register here
Private Tenants forum
As part of our commitment to Best Value we wished to provide private tenants with the opportunity to express their views on how we could make improvements to the public awareness of and to the usage of services provided by the Private Housing team and the Housing Advice Centre.
This consultation took the form of a discussion group, held on March 25 2004 and you can download the report written after the forum in Adobe's pdf format below.
 Private Tenants forum report (714 kb)
Special surveys
Once a year instead of our normal customer questionnaire we send our customers a questionnaire that focuses on more specific areas of the service.
Special survey 2005 (34 kb)
Charter Mark
We are very proud of the fact that we currently hold four successive Charter Mark Awards (1994, 1997, 2000 and 2004) and constantly strive to maintain the high standards required for such awards.
Charter Mark holders have to demonstrate that they place customers at the centre of the service they provide. To do so they have to provide information based on a series of criteria, these include ease of access, joining up with other organisations, use of technology, dealing with complaints, and involving and consulting with the people who use the service.
For more information on the Charter Mark scheme- visit www.chartermark.gov.uk
How to get in touch
If you would like to contact us about any aspect of customer care you can use any of the following ways:
Email: esd@wandsworth.gov.uk
Telephone: 020 8871 6204/6154
Fax: 020 8871 6147
Minicom: 020 8871 8403 |
