THE possibility of a foreign call centre to serve Barnet Council has “not been ruled out” as part of the cost-cutting Future Shape measures.

Last night officials confirmed there is a plan to have a call centre to handle all residents' inquiries coming onto the council within 15 months under the easyCouncil plans.

At the Future Shape scrutiny committee last night councillors grilled top officers on the progress of the projects so far.

When asked by Cllr Alan Schneiderman whether the new call centres would be in Barnet Craig Cooper, commercial director at the council, said: “It's not ruled in and it's not ruled out.

“There's no decision or future expectation where telephones will be answered, whether in Barnet, nationally or internationally.”

Currently 300 people within the authority have some form of frontline customer service role in their job description, but Rod Matthews, the director of corporate services, said there would be a “changes to work profiles”.

When asked by Cllr Schneiderman whether the changes would see jobs being lost neither man gave a direct answer.

Last week a report revealed the council failed to answer 48 per cent of “customer calls” and was missing the target to answer 71 per cent of calls within five rings by 20 per cent.

Labour spokesman for Customer Care, Cllr Julie Johnson said: “Some services are getting worse, and residents can’t even ring up to complain, as the council fails to answer the phone half the time. 

“The council have admitted that they have much fewer staff to answer the telephone than in other council’s, and that is the reason why they miss so many calls – clearly they need to employ more people.”

Other areas discussed in last night's meeting included legal advice being drawn up on whether certain services can lawfully be run by bodies other than the council.

Councillors were told the plans are still not finalised, despite the work in some areas to restructure services being quite advanced.

They also asked for trade union and staff representatives to be brought before the committee to answer questions on how they feel the council is consulting over the plans with them.

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