Customer Insight Report 2021 to 2022

The purpose of this Customer Insight report is to bring together the information collected about the customer experience of using Brighton & Hove City Council services in 2021/2022. This performance has been in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

By customer we mean any user of council services, whether voluntary or involuntary.

This includes:

• residents
• visitors
• businesses
• students
• service users and their representatives

This report presents what we currently know about our customer services. Our aim is to ensure we better understand the needs of all our customers, and to learn and grow consistently from the feedback we receive, in order to improve the customer experience. The report also includes information about the size of the customer base and transactional volumes for various services. Data presented in the report should be considered in that context.

The standards and principles within the promise do not only apply to staff who work directly with customers, but all staff who work for the council, including those in support services such as:

• Human resources
• IT and Digital
• Finance
• Legal

This ensures a consistency of approach and provides staff who do deal directly with customers the appropriate infrastructure, tools, and support to deliver the best customer experience.

Our Customer Experience Vision describes how we intend to deliver on the Customer Promise and has been similarly refreshed following customer feedback. These 2 documents are at the heart of our Customer Experience Strategy that was approved at the Policy and Resources Committee in December 2019.  

Customer satisfaction: How was the standard of customer service you received from the council team or service?

This table shows the percentage of customers who found the level of service to be fairly or very good in 2021/2022.

It shows the overall level of satisfaction for the council is 57% for 2021/2022.

This is an increase of 3% when compared to 2020/2021.

Service accessibility: How easy or difficult was it for you to access or use the council service or team?

This table shows the percentage of customers who found council services fairly or very easy to access.

It shows the overall ease of access for the council is 51% for 2021/2022.

This is a decrease of 10% when compared to 2020/2021.

Results have been taken from the corporate Customer Experience Survey (from 3,192 respondents) carried out in March and April 2022 and combined, where available, with surveys carried out by services or associated partners.

Results are only included where more than 10 responses were returned. Due to the varying methodologies used in collecting and compiling data, results shown can only be considered indicative of customer experience.   

Compliments

4% increase in compliments received

1,492 compliments were received in 2021/2022

Complaints

55% increase in Stage 1 complaints when compared with 2020/2021

1,768 Stage 1 complaints

Services with the highest reduction in complaints:

• Major projects and regeneration received 72% (13) fewer complaints when compared to 2020/2021
• Children’s social care received 18% (6) fewer complaints when compared to 2020/2021

Services who received the most complaints:

• Parking account for 22% of all complaints (392). An increase of 132% compared to 2020/2021
• CityClean (now known as Environmental Services) account for 19% of all complaints (331). An increase of 29% compared to 2020/2021

Complaint handling

Escalation of complaints from Stage 1 to Stage 2 decreased from 7.4% in 2021/2022 to 6.2% in 2020/2021

An improvement of 1.4%

109 complaints were escalated to Stage 2 and investigated

57% of the complaints investigated at stage 2 were upheld

The number of Stage 1 complaints responded to within 10 working days has increased, going from 64% in 2020/2021 to 73% in 2021/2022. An improvement of 9% (1296/1768)

The number of Stage 2 complaints responded to within 20 working days has reduced, going from 70% in 2020/2021 to 65% in 2021/2022. A decline of 5% (87/133) 

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld 75% of complaints they investigated about Brighton & Hove City Council (16) in 2020/2021, compared to 53% in 2019/2020. An increase of 22%

Similar authorities averaged 63% of complaints upheld by the ombudsman.

Stage 1 Complaints: Response performance

This table shows the number of Stage 1 complaints responded to within target between March 2020 and February 2022.  

Stage 1 Complaints by service

This table shows the number of stage 1 complaints received by each service per year, from 2018/2019 to 2021/2022.

It shows the overall number of stage 1 complaints received by the council has increased by 55% when compared to 2020/2021. 

Online forms

334,338 online forms were received in 2021/2022.

An average of 27,862 online forms per month.

Council Tax received 3,445 online forms, the highest number of forms across the council, accounting for 22% of all forms received.

Phone contacts

Our high-volume services 232,528 received phone calls in 2021/2022.

We received 19,377 phone calls on average per month

Housing Repairs 36% (85,000 calls) and Parking 19% (45,000 calls) received the highest number of calls

Council Tax, Housing Benefits, Housing Needs and Parking have not consistently met the Customer Promise of answering calls on average within 10 minutes.

Taking into account all high-volume services, the average call waiting time for the council was within 8 minutes.

Email

Approximately 413,292 emails were received in 2021/2022 across our high-volume services.

An average of approximately 34,400 per month.                 

With the exception of Council Tax, Benefits, Parking Services and Housing Needs: Homemove, high volume transactional services responded to the majority of emails within 10 working days meeting the Customer Promise               

Website

Approximately 3.5 million people visited the council website

Top 3 pages:

• Check your bin and box collection days (249,128 page views)
• Get a parking permit (204,031 views)
• View your Council Tax account and bills (194,818 views)

Over 16.8 million unique page views.

Post

Approximately 32,000 pieces of post received over the past year.

An average of 2,650 per month.

Contact by channel

You can view this information in:

• a chart
• table
• explanatory text

Contact by channel chart 

Contact by channel table of results 

Explanatory text

The chart and table show the proportion of customer contact by channel:

• online
• phone
• email
• face to face
• post

It shows that emails were the most frequent method of contact accounting for 41% of all council contact, and that 74% of all contact came through digital channels (online forms were the second most frequent with 33%).

In 2020 97.7% of people within Brighton & Hove have recently used the internet, this is up by 7.2% when compared to 2015 and 5.4% higher than the UK.

(Source: Office for National Statistics, Internet Users UK:2020).

These results are taken from responses to the satisfaction survey provided through the corporate consultation portal and do not include results from independent surveys carried out within services.

As such, the results presented as average of all respondents will differ to the data presented in overall satisfaction data.

68% (2,177) of respondents to the satisfaction survey agreed to provide equalities data out of a total 3,191 responses.

The respondents who provided equalities data (2,177) were on average more satisfied (35%), than the average of all respondents; 30% (3,191).

Only 13% of respondents who did not choose to provide equalities data (1,014) were satisfied with the level of customer service, significantly lower than the average of all respondents and those who provided equalities data.

Ethnicity

• From the 2,177 respondents who provided equalities data:
  • 2,110 (66% of all respondents) provided their ethnicity
  • 30 preferred not to say
  • 37 did not answer the question
• Of the 2,110 respondents:
  • 314 (14 %) are from a Black and Minority Ethnic background - city demographic 19.5% (in line with the Census 2011 data Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) is defined as all ethnic groups other than White English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British)
• Respondents who identified as BME were on average 6% more satisfied (41%) with the level of customer service than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)

Sexual Orientation

• From the 2,177 respondents who provided equalities data:
  • 1,982 (62% of all respondents) provided their sexual orientation
  • 141 preferred not to say
  • 54 did not answer the question
• Of the 1,982 respondents, 277 respondents (14%) identified as LGBQ - city demographic 11 to 15% (Sexual orientation data was not provided in the census 2011. This figure is taken from a survey conducted by the University of Brighton)
• Respondents who identified as heterosexual were on average 1% more satisfied with the level of customer service (36%) than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)
• Respondents who identified as LGB were on average 4% less satisfied with the level of customer service (31%) than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)
• 34% of respondents who identified as ‘Gay man’ were satisfied with the level of customer service, 1% lower than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)
• 23% of people who identified as ‘Bisexual’ were satisfied with the level of customer service; 12% lower than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)

Day to day activity limited due to health or a disability

• From the 2,177 respondents who provided equalities data:
  • 2,094 (66% of all respondents) provided data on whether their day-to-day activities were limited due to health or disability
  • 65 preferred not to say
  • 18 did not answer the question
• Of the 2,094 respondents:
  • 634 (30%) are limited in day-to-day activities due to a long-term health problem or disability - city demographic 16.3% with 309 respondents (15%) indicating they are limited a lot in day-to-day activities due to a long-term health problem or disability - city demographic 7.5%
• Respondents who identified as having their day-to-day activity limited due to health or a disability were on average 7% more satisfied with the level of customer service (42%) than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)

Satisfaction by age

• From the 2,177 respondents who provided equalities data:
  • 2,126 (67% of all respondents) provided data on their age
  • 51 did not answer the question
• Of the 2,126 respondents:
  • 1,529 (72%) are age 16 to 64 - city demographic 71% (city demographic data on age and gender was taken from the Brighton & Hove JSNA summary 2017, published in September 2018)
  • 570 (22%) are age 65 to 84 - city demographic 71%
  • 27 (1%) are aged 85 years or older - city demographic 2%
• Respondents who are age 16 to 49 were on average 8% less satisfied (27%) than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)
• Respondents who are aged 50 years or older were on average 4% more satisfied (39%) than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)

Satisfaction by gender

• From the 2,177 respondents who provided equalities data:
  • 2,138 (67% of all respondents) provided data on their gender
  • 24 preferred not to say
  • 15 did not answer the question
• Of the 2,138 respondents: 
  • 1,198 (56%) identified as female - city demographic 50%
  • 923 (43%) identified as male - city demographic 50%
  • 17 (1%) identified as other
• Respondents who identified as male were on average 2% more satisfied (37%) than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)
• 33% of respondents who identified as female were satisfied with the level of customer service, 2% lower than the average of all respondents who provided equalities data (35%)

Percentage of enquiries responded to in 5 working days

Total enquiries responded to in time - 394.

Total enquiries that were responded to late - 156.

72% of enquiries were responded to within target.

Top 15 reasons for contact: Volume and performance

A total of 554 enquiries were submitted during the pilot of the Councillor Enquiries Case Management system up to 30 April 2022, with 394 (72%) being responded to within the target of 5 working days.

Overhanging or overgrown trees or bushes:

• 71% responded to on time
• 29% responded late

Street cleaning:

• 88% responded to on time
• 13% responded late

Repairs - planned replacement of kitchens, bathrooms and electrical rewires:

• 100% responded to on time

Noise issue:

• 78% responded to on time
• 22% responded late

Condition of parks:

• 70% responded to on time
• 30% responded late

Roadworks (Council and utility works):

• 50% responded to on time
• 50% responded late

Parking enforcement:

• 50% responded to on time
• 50% responded late

Traffic management:

• 38% responded to on time
• 62% responded late

Fly tipping:

• 86% responded to on time
• 14% responded late

Housing Customer Services (including decorating and gardening schemes)

• 56% responded to on time
• 44% responded late

Homemove:

• 53% responded to on time
• 47% responded late

Anti-social behaviour:

• 52% responded to on time
• 48% responded late

Parking permits:

• 94% responded to on time
• 6% responded late

Repairs - day to day, including emergencies 

• 95% responded to on time
• 5% responded late

Rubbish or recycling collection:

• 78% responded to on time
• 22% responded late

By customer we mean, any user of council services, voluntary or involuntary.

This includes:

• residents
• visitors to the city
• businesses
• students
• service users and their representatives

About our city

Brighton & Hove’s population is estimated at 286,000.                   

The population registered to vote is 204,291.

130,000 Council Taxpayers.                      

31,800 children attending school.

16,400 receiving housing benefit.                        

11,550 total council owned dwellings.

11,300 Business rate payers.                       

624km of carriageway.

1,020km of footpaths.                 

12km of coastline.

98 parks and open spaces.                       

680,000 visits to libraries.

Our Services

City Environment:

• 5.5 million refuse collections
• 2 million recycling collections
• 700 miles of pavement cleaned

 Parking and Transport:

• 360,000 visitor permits issued
• 57,000 resident permits issued
• 6,300 Concessionary Bus passes issued
• 4,500 Blue Badge issued
• 1,200 Business permits issued
• 14,387 permits for roadworks granted

Development Management (Planning):

• 3,700 applications received                      
• 2,650 applications approved

Housing Management:

• 11,592 Council tenancies
• 2,290 leasehold flats in council blocks

Housing Needs:

• 2,800 Applications for social housing
• 1,800 Units of temporary Accommodation
• 1,700 open cases for prevention, intervention, advice
• 1,150 Emergency placements and transfers

 Health and Adult Social Care:

• 4,700 care assessments or reviews conducted
• 4,350 people receiving long term adult social care service
• 1,300 people receive short term intensive support
• 30,200 terms of daily living equipment issued

 Families, Children and Learning:

• 5,450 children with special education need receive support in schools
• 2,150 children attend our children’s centres and nurseries
• 1,950 children supported by social work to be safe (including 400 children in care)
• 500 receive family support

Registrars:

• 3,400 births registered per year
• 2,500 deaths registered per year
• 1,300 marriages registered and officiated
• 580 new British naturalisation certificates issued

 Libraries:

• 14 libraries across the city
• 978,000 items issued
• 19,100 unique users of public computers in libraries

Bereavement:

• 2,000 cremations                                                                              
• 350 burials
• 1,250 deaths reported to the Coroner’s Office

Benefits:

• 19,100 receiving help with Council Tax
• 3,250 new claims assessed
• 2,500 applications assessed for emergency help   

Welcoming and accessible Customer Service Centres

Work to review the accessibility and usability of our customer service centres has already resulted in some improvements. This includes enhanced support to access council services digitally in both Brighton & Hove Customer Service Centres.

Customer Service advisors are available to help customers who need support to self-serve or who are experiencing any issues or barriers in accessing council services.

Review of forms and process to increase immediate resolution and prevention and ensure, if required, enquiries are passed to the most appropriate team in a timely way.

Planned future improvements

Modernising the self-help facilities in customer service centres:

• We provide desktop computers and flatbed scanners for customers to use. However as increasing numbers of people are more familiar with using their smartphones or tablets to go online, we are reviewing the equipment to make it as easy to use as possible.
• Reviewing internal and external signage for Customer Service Centres to make it easier to find and understand what help is available.

Exploring community access points

As most customers now access or contact services digitally, we are exploring having a greater geographic spread of council contact points across the city for people to use self-help facilities or get support to contact council services.

This measure will also contribute to our ambition to be carbon neutral by 2030, reducing the need for travel to access services. It will also help the council make best use of its existing property portfolio.

Continuous improvement of the council’s digital offer

The council is committed to providing comprehensive digital access to services, as this can be more convenient for customers - services can be accessed at any time, rather than having to wait in a telephone queue, or travel to a council building.

Reviewing and improving these services is a continuous process, based on customer and staff feedback and analysis of user journeys.

Recent improvements:

• Access to MyAccount from the home page of the council website and increased numbers of services available through MyAccount
• Improved website design and navigation, including easier to find contact details for services and a navigation menu on the left-hand side of every page, so you can see at a glance the information available in each section of the website.

Planned improvements:

• Upgrading the MyAccount application to improve customer journeys and improve product resilience
• All online forms available from MyAccount – this means that anyone logged into MyAccount won’t need to fill in their personal details each time they want to report or apply for something.
• Widening the use of the Customer Index, to make best use of council information systems and data for the benefit of customers.

Adult Social Care: Access Point

• Wholesale review of methods of access to improve response times to residents.
• Review of forms and process to increase immediate resolution and prevention and ensure, if required, enquiries are passed to the most appropriate team in a timely way.
• Continue to focus on learning from complaints and customer feedback in HASC monthly performance meetings to identify actions needed and monitoring of progress around these.

Benefits

• Digital improvements to online claim forms (staff to analyse and request changes from IT and D)
• Continue to prioritise correspondence received every day with digital correspondence from customer prioritised over other work. Team is looking at possible new work streams, including backlog busting and increased automation of electronic data received from DWP to free staff up to focus on correspondence received from customer.
• Actions to improve or develop the 'human' side of our interactions with customers; share and emphasise the compliments we get from customers, what is important to them, what makes a difference to them.

Childrens Services (including School admissions)

• Provide more control, efficiency, and consistency in how we respond to customer contact including encouraging the use of the Contact Management System to improve the customer journey.
• Engage and consult with customers using customer feedback to adopt a more customer centric approach including a focus on targeting service users who have been ‘under-reached and under-served’ in the past.
• Reviewing the quality, availability, and accessibility of all FCL content published online, to ensure that service information in the public domain is consistent and accurate, promoting the best way to contact the service.  

City Environmental Management

• Improve refuse and recycling services through the CityClean Improvement Programme by investigating and addressing the root cause of repeated missed collections.
• Continue to work with colleagues on the development and implementation of digital solutions to improve service delivery and communication with the residents including new back-office solutions to maximise efficiency in tandem with a front facing app to improve customers’ requests, complaints and resolution
• Over the next 12 months, redesign rounds to improve the refuse and recycling services and reduce missed collections.

Council Tax

• Specific team collaborating with MyAccount team to improve the usability of website service.
• Increased flexibility in resourcing phone opening times to match periods of low and high demand. 
• Increased resources (including backlog team) to respond to customer contacts and reduce delays to response.

Housing Needs

• Housing Needs to introduce times for live phone calls to respond more quickly and in real time to customers who choose to contact us by telephone. It is anticipated that this will reduce failure demand via the phone service, resulting in fewer voicemails and emails.
• Improve response rate and time to respond to emails (through implementation of customer contact channels and reduction in emails)
• Ensure corporate customer complaint and customer service response times are adhered to by all services within Housing Needs.

Housing Management (HCS)

• We will increase the opening hours of our Housing Customer Service telephone line for residents to use between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, in June 2022.
• We will review, and provide staff training, on how we communicate with customers and other services, focussing particularly on how we meet the Customer Promise while adapting to the council’s  future ways of working. 
• We will prepare for the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures, which are due to be introduced in 2023/2024. These are designed to be a core set of statutory measures that all social landlords will have to meet and report against.

Housing Repairs

• Increase the available resource to the repairs teams to reduce the wait time for previously reported tasks
• Provide coaching and training for new and existing colleagues to improve the customers experience and provide a process for keeping tenants updated on progress.
• Ensuring that tenants are made aware of changes to appointments to reduce the number of missed visits.

Parking

• Continue to engage with the corporate strategy to improve the website including navigation and language used
• Continue with the Parking Customer Journey with the introduction of virtual permits
• To improve the online MyAccount customer offer. Support the use of the Customer Service Centres to help customers who require face to face help to access online services.
• Reduce call waiting time by ensuring enough resource is available to manage calls and answer online contact within 5 days to reduce repeated contact.  Investigate and support improvements to the corporate telephone system demonstrating a need for an intelligent system

Planning and Development Control

• Website root and branch review, simplification, target to user groups
• Enforcement modernisation
• Improve communications around positive outcomes from planning and more comprehensive and inclusive consultation
• Ensuring consistency of customer service offer from officers via training, communicating priorities and development

Transport

• Develop a single point of contact to provide more control, efficiency, accountability, and consistency in customer contact. This will remove confusion over the best way to contact the service by having a single point of contact that is more manageable for both staff and managers.  To include a front facing app of the Love Clean Streets type and link to Fix My Street, My Account to cover all routes.
• Improve the quality, accountability, and accessibility of information about Transport services on the Brighton & Hove City Council website.
• Continue to ensure we engage and consult with our residents/businesses/stakeholders on transport strategies, policies, and projects.
• Continue will the best-in-class approach to Mini-Holland and Liveable Neighbourhoods with the Councils approach of extensive engagement and co-production.

We welcome any suggestions, questions or other feedback about this report.

Send an email to:

• Luke.Hamblin@brighton-hove.gov.uk - Customer Experience Programme Manager
• Victoria.Paling@brighton-hove.gov.uk Customer Experience Lead
• Rima.Desai@brighton-hove.gov.uk  - Assistant Director – Customer, Modernisation and Performance Insight