The coalition running West Oxfordshire District Council have today (Wednesday 13th September) approved plans to cut back on the opening hours for the councils call centre.
At the Executive meeting held at the councils Woodgreen offices in Witney the senior councillors supported a recommendation to close front and back-office telephone lines at 2pm every day. The report presented to councillors showed that 191,031 calls were made to West Oxfordshire and Cotswold District Council between 2021 and 2022. During this period the volume of Web Form utilised by residents tripled to over 98,000. This shift of contact method continues into 2023 when, for the first time, the council has seen digital access volumes exceed telephone access volumes in the first half of the year.
Cllr Michele Mead, the Conservative opposition leader, attended the meeting and expressed her concerns about cutting residents off in this way. Cllr Mead said, “The executive should not be going ahead with this cut to the contact service as they risk stopping residents from accessing the council services. If someone now becomes homeless after 2pm they will be expected to travel into Witney to try and speak to someone at the council’s offices or wait for the out of hours service to start from 5pm.”
She added, “One of this council’s key corporate priorities is ‘Putting Residents First’ yet this cut to a key frontline service is especially restricting access for our vulnerable or elderly residents in West Oxfordshire and this is not acceptable at all.”
The Executive voted to support the recommendation with the reduced telephone access hours, on a trial basis, with effect from Monday 16th October. The councillors will receive a further report, detailing the findings and recommendations from the trial to an Executive meeting in the first quarter of 2024/25.
