Wednesday 20 April 2011

Park Ward case work statistics


Here is a graph showing how many items of case work -- potholes, education issues, parking problems etc -- each councillor in Park Ward has put through the Front Office system since 2009. It is based on figures taken from this spreadsheet of all councillor Front Office activity.

As I was only elected in May 2010 so my history starts from then. The other two councillors don't seem to have been particularly active up until recently.

In the past commentators have suggested that some councillors choose not to use the Front Office system for their casework and this accounted for their low Front Office statistics. I have never understood this because if you use the system, councillor services will log your case work, keep track of it, chase it up for you and help you write letters back to residents. If you don't use the system then you either fire and forget your communications with officers and don't keep track of them or you have to use your own system to manage casework without the support of councillor services.

It is interesting to note that both of the other councillors in the ward have started to log more items of case work in the run up to this election. But they didn't do this before the 2010 election? My analysis is that in 2010 Labour were complacent and they are now getting worried about a second Green councillor and the Conservative has realised that the electorate are about to kick him out.

What do you think?

2 comments:

Christine said...

RBC Councillor Services provide a superior service compared with many other local authorities. But there are other perfectly effective ways of getting serious casework done. And I still believe in empowering residents to report minor problems (but important to them) themselves and get results. Far more sustainable.

Rob White said...

I agree about empowering residents. I particularly like the Fix My Street website: http://www.fixmystreet.com/