THE services offered by One Stop Shops in Monmouthshire are set to be improved with the introduction of a central telephone system dealing with all enquires for the whole of the county.

A report undertaken by the Corporate Director for Regeneration, Environment and Resources, Steve Greenslade, Area Managers, Jenny Lewis, Dave Jones and Dale Roberts and officers Matthew Gatehouse and Trevor Samuel at Monmouthshire County Council found that people in rural communities find it difficult to access a One Stop Shop and have recommended setting up a customer contact centre to deal with all telephone enquires.

However, the review recommends retaining the One Stop Shops for personal callers but moving to a "department store model" and pilot the use of mobile One Stop Shops in community buildings.

In the long term customers will be encouraged to use the central telephone system and Monmouthshire County Council's website as a means of contact.

Mr Greenslade said, "The telephone system we have at the moment is a problem, people do spend a lot of time in the circuit and end up at County Hall. The phone keeps ringing and people thing there is no one there.

"The CRM system will recognise you if you have phone before and screen will tell us who it is and what the problem is. It gives a feeling that people are there to help."

The shake up will see the three area manager posts deleted and replaced with three county wide posts focusing on customer Service and Access, Citizen and Community Involvement and Business Process Reengineering. The three posts will dependent on a senior management review but will be senior posts within MCC with two of them being at head of service level.

It is recommended that area committees are disbanded as they have had mixed success, with many councillors thinking that instead of going to their area meetings they time would be best served in their ward. Communities will be able to maintain contact with councillors by other means of communication.

The report states, "Area committees, while valued by many for their contact withy citizens, are not working effectively and have not established a clear relationship with Cabinet which is necessary to deliver real outcomes."

At a meeting of the Strong Communities Select committee last week, Area Manager for Central Monmouthshire Jenny Lewis told councillors, "The key messages are divided into three lots. The first being access, for members of the public, one stop shops are regarded as sacre sanc.

"All of our evidence says one stop shops are very well regarded. The problem is with the rural society that doesn't find one stop shops reliable, they are not regarded.

"Access found it is good as far as it goes. Yes area working is working very well but everyone needs it to be working very well."

Delivery of area working found that services are not integrated meaning MCC is not as responsive to customer needs as it should be.

The report states, "There is not a single comprehensive database of information about our services that can be used by front line staff. This means that citizens are not always getting consistent or up-to-date information and ultimately may end up with inappropriate services."

The final key message is better citizen and community involvement, Jenny Lewis said that this has improved measurably but again the review found that it is not consistent. "All our officers should be out there building relationships," said Jenny. "It is time to put the principle of community engagement across the community."

Set to be presented to Cabinet on May 6, if successful there is a view for the changes to be implement over time, with the call centre to be set up fairly quickly while others will take longer.

Mr Greenslade adds, "Since they opened in 2002 the Council's four One Stop Shops have become a valued element of access to public services and the 'walk in' part of the service has been especially well received.  We are looking at ways of extending at least some of these benefits to the more rural areas.  There are some problems with our telephone response system and we are looking at ways of improving our performance in this area".