Dudley councillors have expressed frustration over the council's performance in the first quarter of the financial year, with six key targets missed, two exceeded, and three within tolerance. The findings were presented at the Core Business Scrutiny Committee meeting on September 23.
FOI response rates fall far short
One of the missed targets was the speed of responses to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, which have a legal limit of 20 days. In April, only 50.7 percent of enquiries were answered on time, well below the council's target of 90 percent.
Cllr Quasim Mugal said: “I wouldn’t mind if this was the first time that this has been raised but it is now the third time in this committee since I’ve been here and it’s getting worse. How many times will this committee hear ‘our demand is really high and we can’t cope’? At some point we have to say we are not doing what is our requirement and we need to put resources in there, I’m sick of hearing the same excuse.”
Dudley Council Plus call handling under pressure
The council also fell short in answering calls to its Dudley Council Plus Service. Call volumes rose by 31 percent compared to the same period last year, reaching 123,741 calls, of which only 66 percent were answered—significantly less than the 85 percent target.
Officers attributed the shortfall to customer contact staff being redirected to other duties due to high demand, partly caused by the introduction of new waste collection services during a period of traditionally peak demand.
Cllr Phil Atkins said: “We get told the same stuff all the time, demand, not enough capacity, and can’t forecast it’s going to get really busy when we change the bin rollouts and when Christmas is coming it’s going to get a bit snowy – at some point it gets a bit ridiculous. I work in the NHS and can predict within ten patients how many patients are coming into ED every day so I find it astonishing, it’s just a bit farcical.”
Other missed targets and management response
Additional missed targets included sickness as a percentage of full-time employee days, subject access request compliance, the percentage of corporate complaints receiving a full response within ten working days, and high-priority audit recommendations being implemented on time.
A report for the committee, signed by Gurdeep Singh Aulakh, associate director of technology, innovation, business intelligence and insight: core business, said: “While positive performance is being achieved in areas including income collection, council tax collection and ICT infrastructure availability, improvement is required in customer access, workforce wellbeing, statutory compliance and governance-related measures. Management focus will continue addressing under performance and completing outstanding target-setting and reporting arrangements to support robust performance management throughout 2026/27.”
