But there's disagreement over Council target figures
The Council’s performance under the Labour Administration continues to decline - according to the Conservatives.
They say over the last three months, the Labour Council has hits fewer nationally set targets.
In the first quarter, they hit 51% of these targets, down from 55% last year.
The Conservatives claim when they were in control, the Council regularly hit 65%.
One area where they say the Council admits that service is getting worse is customers having to wait longer both in reception and on the telephone to speak to a Council official.
Councillor David Millican, Conservative Group Leader said:
“Residents keep telling me that they are fed up having to wait so long in Perceval House reception. Recently I had to wait 20 minutes to get someone to answer the phone to report a fly tip. This is totally unacceptable.”
The Labour Administration needs to answer the question, when will their performance stop getting worse?”
But Labour say the Tories have got their facts wrong. Council Leader Julian Bell says Cllr Millican has responded to the accusations:
“Cllr Millican is mistaken when he says council performance has gone down from last year, it has in fact improved. The council report that Cllr Millican is referring to shows that 64% of our performance indicators have improved since last year and 4% fewer are below target.
'' The Conservatives are also mistaken to call these national targets. Their Government has abolished minimum standards in order to disguise the impact of their cuts.
''In Ealing we set very ambitious targets for ourselves. The Labour administration is determined to hit these ambitious targets despite the £85m that Cllr Millican’s government has cut from our budget.
''At Tuesday night’s meeting Council officers gave a verbal update on customer service performance. The latest data that we have on customer service shows that we are now back within our targets for customer service, the report reflected data from several months ago. I said at the time that I didn’t expect to see this in Cllr Millican’s press release and I have been proved right.”
Who's right and who's wrong? What is your experience? Discuss on the forum or email me.
15th September 2011