Figures for August released today by the Council will confirm many residents experiences.

The time being taken by the Council to answer telephone calls is ridiculously high.

In some cases, residents have had to wait for 20 minutes for their call to be answered.

Many Councils routinely publish on their web site quality of service stats covering basic services such as the time taken to deal with issues. The York Council fails to do so.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Council has now admitted that the maximum time that telephone callers had to wait, during the week commencing 5th August, was:

Between 8:00am and 9:00am 3:52 mins (maximum waiting time for call to be answered)

9am-10am 11:30 mins

10am-11am 09:22 mins

11am-12am 08:34 mins

12am -1pm 12:32 mins

1pm -2 pm 11:56 mins

2 pm-3pm 20:22 mins

3pm -4pm 10:27 mins

4pm -5 pm 10:03 mins

5pm -5:30pm 16:21 mins

The failures have prompted calls for the switchboard to remain open for an additional hour to deal with the backlog.

It is likely that many callers will have abandoned their attempts to get through.

The figures suggest that the quality of service being provided by the Council has declined since it moved into its new “state of the art” West Office building