SOMERSET Council is deliberately leaving some callers on hold for “a minimum of three minutes” to encourage more people to report problems online.

Somerset Council officially replaced the county council and four district councils in April 2023, with the new authority inheriting all the existing councils’ services – including its customer services team which deal directly with local residents.

Councillor Gill Slocombe, a long-serving Conservative councillor in Bridgwater, complained at a recent meeting that customer service had “gone out of the window” and said the council was not doing enough to meet the needs of people without mobile phones or internet access.

The council admitted that some callers were being kept on hold longer to encourage them to report problems via its website – such as missed bin collections.

However, it also stated that more than 80 per cent of customer calls were solved at the first point of contact and around 85 per cent of callers said they were satisfied with the existing service.

Ms Slocombe (who represents the Bridgwater West division, made her comments ahead of a full council meeting held in Bridgwater on September 26.

She said: “To be a councillor you need to care about people, want to help, want to make a change and direct them to the best possible route.

“Up until this time I have always felt that I have managed to achieve this, but now since the new unitary I feel as lost as many of our electorate.”

Since ‘vesting day’ (April 1, 2023), the council’s switchboard has received 686,388 calls from members of the public – with the average handling time (the length of conversation once a call is answered) being 12 minutes.

Ms Slocombe warned that the council could potentially be in breach of the Equality Act 2010, and urged both councillors and officers to create “a caring council” to ensure people’s concerns were taken seriously.

Councillor Federica Smith-Roberts, portfolio holder for communities, housing revenue account, culture, equalities and diversity, said the council was trying to “channel shift” people into reporting more issues online – and admitted one method to encourage this was longer hold times for certain issues.