Shadow communities secretary, Eric Pickles, is an energetic member of the Opposition, who works on the basis that if you chuck enough mud at the Government, some of it will stick. The only problem is that, from time-to-time, the mud seems to end up on town hall doorsteps. Take his latest this week – ‘Whitehall tells town halls to stop helping residents'. Apparently, among the new 198 performance indicators is one which ‘rewards councils for avoiding the public' (National indicator 14: Available contact). This was duly regurgitated in The Times on Monday under the headline, ‘Councils told to cut contact with public.' Actually, that's not quite all the story. As most customer-focused businesses know, there is a hierarchy of costs associated with handling inquiries. The most expensive is face-to-face, next is telephone, and cheapest is the Internet or ‘Web self-service'. In fact, a self-service Web transaction is 46 times less costly than a face-to-face transaction, and 24 times cheaper than a telephone transaction. Efficiency guru, Sir David Varney, himself said the public sector should reduce telephone requests by 50%. Plainly, the more business which can be conducted on the Web, the less costly it is for the business, or in this case, the council. So, it seems perfectly sensible to reduce the amount of face-to-face contact. And who wants to spend a morning queuing in a town hall reception area? Furthermore, being a sad anorak, I recalled a release from the local government IT society SOCITM issued last month on exactly the same subject, NI 14. Only SOCITM argued that the indicator, laudable in its aims to reduce costs associated with face-to-face contact, was unlikely to work, because councils did not have the requisite technology in place. In fact, many councils will simply opt not to submit the indicator at all. So, Mr Pickles has rather missed the point. Far from councils not wanting to interact with residents, this is about efficiencies which ought to happen, and may not. The two issues he ought to be addressing are, why on earth the Government has to micro-manage in such detail, and why local government, in turn, hasn't got on with these online efficiencies already. Michael Burton Editor, The MJ
