Service Standards - Revenues

Revenues will provide a service to its customers based on the following standards:

• We will be courteous whenever we communicate with people inside or outside of our organisation.
• We will take care over the way we handle your requirements.
• We will be fair, open and honest.
• We will respect confidentiality and privacy.
• We will provide clear and prompt information about benefit entitlement, bills and liabilities and avoid the use of jargon.
• We will use any complaints as an opportunity to improve our service and talk to you about how we can put them right.
• We will train staff to ensure that we can offer a service to match your expectations.
• We recognise that the needs and wants of our Council Tax, Business Rates and Sundry Debtor customers are different so we will guarantee to provide specialist knowledge to meet those needs.
• We will advise people where they can get independent advice with financial problems, for example the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

Revenues

The Revenues Section is committed to collecting Council Tax, Non-Domestic Rates and Sundry Debtors due to the Council promptly, efficiently and in accordance with the appropriate legislation.

To achieve these objectives the section aims to:

• Achieve collection rates of 98.5% or greater
• Send accurate demands for payment promptly.
• Ensure discounts, exemptions and reliefs are allowed where appropriate.
• Take recovery action that is prompt, fair and effective.
• Refund overpayments within 20 working days of a request.

Face to Face:

• Customers should not need to wait longer than 5 minutes to see a member of staff.
• Special arrangements will be made if it appears you will have to wait longer than 5 minutes.
• If you need to be referred to a specialist you should not have to wait longer than 10 minutes.
• We will be happy to make an appointment should you require it.
• The reception areas will be maintained with up to date and relevant information at all times.
• When we visit you in your home we will always explain what we are doing and show our identity card.
• If required, an appointment can be made so that we can visit you when it is convenient to you.
• We will guarantee our actions when we visit by giving you a contact name and telephone number.

Telephones:

• We will attempt to answer all of our telephone calls within 5 rings.
• We will attempt to resolve all queries as a first point of contact.
• We will provide customers with a call-back service should a query not be resolved when customers first telephone us.
• We will give customers our name and a telephone number for future reference if requested.
• Where practicable we will do as much business on the telephone to avoid delays with the post.
• We will provide an out of hours answer telephone service and will respond to messages the next working day.

In writing (including email):

• We will answer your letters/emails within 10 working days of receiving them.
• If we cannot answer your letter/email within 10 working days we will acknowledge and explain why.
• Letters/e-mails we write will be clearly written.
• If we require additional information you will not be asked to pay for further postage.

With Forms:

• All forms will be clearly written, without the use of jargon and will contain, where appropriate, information about where to get independent advice.
• We will provide help to fill in forms if you require it.
• We want you to tell us if you find any of our forms not meeting the above standards.