Fife Council's customer service centres re-open for face to face visits

Housing and community services are due to reopen their customer service centres in Fife.

From Monday, the Town House in Kirkcaldy, plus Glenrothes, Dunfermline and Cupar will be open to members of the public.

The following week, September 14, will hopefully welcome back centres in Methil, Cowdenbeath and Inverkeithing.

At a community and housing services subcomittee meeting, Diarmuid Cotter, head of customer and online services said: "Whatever we can do over the phone, we will do, but if people need to come in and see us they can come in and see do."

Visits will be by appointment only, and the customer service team is trying to keep them as short as possible as per government guidance.

The centres are currently being 'Covid-proofed' with screens installed and hygiene measures put in place.

Fife Council has been operating via phone and online help during lockdown.

A report to the committee stressed that more work was being done to enhance digital services.

"The contact centre works closely with the web team to ensure customers can access good quality online information as we continue to encourage people to conduct their business with the council digitally, focusing a telephone presence where customer need it the most.

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"We have introduced webchat into the general team , and this is proving to be a popular and efficient channel. It will continue to be rolled out to more teams - more than 700 webchats have been dealt with since it launched."

In the past year, staffing has also increased significantly within the housing and community services from 279 to 441.

Councillor Judy Hamilton, convener of community and housing services, said: "This is a tremendous piece of work- setting up the new service and almost doubling the amount of staff.

"I had an opportunity to visit the contact centre in Kirkcaldy and see how they were taking up the helping hands requests as well .

“It was a really really busy time and I know that everyone is working really hard doing jobs that are not their own."

> Hannah Brown is Local Democracy Reporter for Fife & Angus

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