Councils to merge contact centres

The decision to create a joint contact centre for the district councils covering Richmondshire and Hambleton is part of an ongoing drive to cut costs by sharing services.

The two authorities have saved more than £2.3m since the project launched two years ago, and it is hoped the latest move will cut costs by £38,000. Two posts will be lost, but a council spokeswoman stressed it is not anticipated redundancies will be enforced.

The two councils dealt with 246,000 calls between them during the last financial year. But 12 per cent of callers to Richmondshire District Council hung up before they had been dealt with. In Hambleton, just one per cent of calls were aborted before they had been dealt with.

The new contact centre is aimed at driving down the rate for Richmondshire to below the national average of eight per cent.

The new system goes live in December and staff at any of the two councils’ eight sites will be able to answer and deal with calls for either authority.

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