Agenda item

QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC NO. 1

Under Procedure Rule No 10, Ron Brown, of Tamworth will ask the

Leader of the Labour Party, Councillor C Dean, the following question:-

By which date will this new controlling Group publish its own itemised Plan,

including measurement criteria and delivery timescales, for changing things

for the better?

Answer:-

As you can imagine we are still in the transition stage with Labour only taking control this evening, but as I have said earlier in my address to the council we will be giving priority to the pledges that we were elected on.  We know that people want to see change that was reflected in the voting on 2^nd May.  But it would be wrong of me to put any timescales on projects at this time we will need to meet with officers to find a way forward to implement the changes we all want.  But I can confirm that pour group as already had meetings start this process and we will work with officers to develop the Corporate Plan. 

QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC NO. 2

Under Procedure Rule No 10, Ron Brown, of Tamworth will ask the

Leader of the Labour Party, Councillor C Dean, the following question:-

Does the majority Group have any plan to migrate the Public Survey Process

of various Council-controlled topics away from inbound, unpublished, posted,

or emailed opinions and towards public examination and dialogue on Social

Media, such as Facebook, where very many more opinions can be expected?

Answer:-

Thank you for your question again.

We engage with customers in many ways, formal surveys are just one way we understand how people feel, but we also engage with people face to face such as through our tenants’ groups and councillors through their surgeries and by talking to people when they attend our events, shows, and receive a direct service from us.

Council services closely monitor information and comments on social media to shape how services are delivered, and we also use these to shape communications going forward. For example, people were sharing they didn’t know enough about what’s happening in the town centre, so we’ve installed information on our hoarding, increased information on social media and shared information with the local press.

Council services are delivering the priorities of the administration, and now I and my new cabinet are here as a new administration, and we will shape new priorities for staff to deliver. I and my fellow councillors welcome feedback to us from residents; we use this information to make decisions about council services.

Supplementary

What are the timescales envisaged for our Council to actually begin polling resident’s opinions using social media so that all can be seen participated in and measured in terms of both the Council’s and residents’ satisfaction with respect to time.   

Answer

I can say that this is something we have talked about a lot as a group about the transparency about how we get information out to members of the public so it will be something I will be taking up with our communications team and we will look to go forward to see what else that we can do if there are any other ways that we should be engaging with people.  But I will go back to my original statement that tonight is the start, I can’t give you any time frames and what we will do and how we will do things.  Social media changes all the time so we will look at how the best ways that we can get our message out and engage people because we are very keen that the engagement is there.