RENFREWSHIRE Council is being urged to improve services at its customer contact centre after it was revealed staff are taking too long to answer calls.

Latest figures show that a third of calls to the contact centre are not answered within the council’s 40-second waiting time target.

And SNP councillors claim that 20 per cent of all housing repair calls are being abandoned as people are left hanging.

Councillor Kenny MacLaren, who represents the Paisley North West ward, said: “There is a concern that there are not enough staff, that those in post do not have enough training and that the staff are being let down by a Labour administration who simply don’t care about the service provided to the public.

“In any improvement plan we have to take the views and experience of the staff into consideration. Too many are leaving – some for lower paid jobs – so there must be a serious issue here.

“The SNP group have previously raised our concerns over the services provided by the customer contact centre but nothing seems to have happened.

“That is why we were calling for a cross-party group to analyse all the problems within the customer contact centre and to bring forward proposals to improve the service.”

Advisors at the customer service centre, based at the council’s Paisley headquarters, are trained to handle enquiries about a range of services, including everything from flooding and dangerous buildings to anti-social behaviour and social work services.

Councillor Mike Holmes, the council’s depute leader, claims the local authority has set out “a clear and comprehensive approach” on how it is improving the whole approach to the way customers contact the council.

He said: “Latest figures show that 95 per cent of calls to the customer centre are being answered and 67 per cent are being answered within 40 seconds. The average wait time was one minute and 28 seconds.

“The queue management system means people can receive a call back and don’t need to stay on the phone.

“Additional training and recruitment measures have been put in place at the contact centre to improve call response times after a period of exceptionally high staff turnover.”

Cllr Holmes also stressed that there are other ways for people to contact the council, including the MyAccount service, which has over 11,000 customers.

He added: “All of these measures are improving response times and access to services.”