The Council have belatedly published answers to questions posed at its meeting in December. One of the questions tabled asked about complaint levels towards the end of last year and also sought information about the source of service reports.

Concerns had been raised about whether some web generated reports had found their way into the system.

The number of complaints received by the Authority is reported as

Complaints	Jun – Nov   2013
Stage 1	511
Stage 2	126
Stage 3	2
Total	639

Stage 3 complaints are the most serious. The classification means that the complainant remains dissatisfied with the response provided by the Council

The overall number of contacts with the Council (by channel) are:

	April	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Total
Total telephone calls 2012	23980	23525	22654	22654	22373	23938	140851
Total footfall 2012	5775	6167	5706	6456	5997	6427	36528
Total Emails 2012	3716	2969	3232	4570	4134	3413	22034
“do it on line” calls 2012	1230	709	1101	1606	1291	1841	7778
Total telephone calls 2013	33587	29971	26320	34132	26385	32990	183385
Total footfall 2013	10415	9757	8061	10123	10259	12226	60841
Total Emails 2013	7088	5199	4474	5823	4825	4697	32106
“do it on line” calls 2013	755	634	934	1667	1471	2387	7848

“Smarter York” App 2013 – 200 reports.

So the number of reports of public service failings being made by York residents to the Council continues to grow.

The much vaunted Smarter York mobile phone “app” has proved to be a flop. The “app” was under-developed when launched and is very limited in its scope when compared to commercial alternatives like “My Council”.

The costs of dealing with contacts made by residents are much higher than were expected when the Council moved to its new HQ.

They bring further into question the wisdom of the decision by Labour Councillors to close down local branch offices in sub-urbs like Acomb.