A committee comprised of members of West Sussex County Council has met to discuss how the council might improve interactions with its customers, including how to deliver a more consistent service, improve online capabilities and reduce the number of phone calls received by the authority.

Unsurprisingly outsourcing may be central to these plans, which has caused concerns among representatives from public service union Unison. The council currently outsources its contact centre services to Capita, and new plans to improve customer service may affect up to 470 staff, who may be offered the chance to move to part time contracts or take up full time employment with Capita.

Dan Sartin, Unison branch secretary, claimed he was worried that giving any further work to Capita would make the contract “too big to fail”; he also asked “why are we not looking harder at how we can do these things in-house?” but reportedly did not offer further suggestions for how this might be done.

Many councils across the UK are finding outsourcing to be the preferable solution for both meeting austerity measures and improving services; it is often easier to improve customer experience with the assistance of a company that specialises in providing customer support across a wide variety of sectors.

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