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As government funding tightens and demand for our services grows, Wokingham Borough Council is looking at new and different ways of working so that we can continue to support our residents.
This touches all areas of the council, including our our HR Department, and our Resident Services team – from weddings to enquiries about bin day.
Weddings and Citizenship Ceremonies both raise money for the Council, which can then be spent on residents. The officers have been working to offer our residents a variety of venues where they can get married, or enter into a civil partnership. Dinton Pastures became a licenced wedding venue in May this year, offering a beautiful rural venue for formal or informal weddings around the country park.
Our registrars can hold weddings in hotels and other licensed venues. This provides those getting married in the Borough with a wonderful choice of venues, including Wokingham’s historic Town Hall, while generating income for the Council. The officers have collaborated with venues to produce a brochure to promote our services at local wedding fayres. If you are interested, you can also pick up a copy from local libraries or the Registrar’s office at Shute End.
The council receives hundreds of queries on more routine issues every week, and our innovative ‘Live Chat’ service on our website means that these can be answered at a fraction of the cost of a phone call. If you visit the Wokingham Borough Council website, you’ll see a purple speech bubble in a circle at the bottom of each page. If you can’t find the information that you need on the website, just click on the speech bubble and you can chat live to our Customer Services team. Live Chat is available from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, except for Bank Holidays.
Outside of regular office hours, you can still find information or report, book or pay for items using our website. Just use the search function on the website to find what you are looking for. This will make sure that your enquiry is directed to the right team, with auto an acknowledgment advising you how long their response is likely to take.
These self service tools get you answers quickly, and helps us keep phone lines open for those residents who don’t use IT and who need to call us or talk face to face about their issues.
The HR team made the decision a couple of years ago to bring recruitment fully in-house for the vast majority of vacancies, rather than paying recruitment agencies. This has been a huge success. Not only has this brought costs down, but council is able to speak directly to the best candidates at an early stage, and vacancies can often be filled faster. The council has also started to train its own staff in areas where it was hard to fill vacancies, such as children’s social care. This has contributed to savings of over £2 million a year on contractors and agency staff.
If you are interested in finding making a career finding innovative ways to serve local residents, please search for Jobs and Careers on the Wokingham Borough Council website.
By Cllr Rachel Bishop-Firth
