Wednesday July 16th 2025
West Lothian Council headquarters
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Stuart Sommerville
Frustrated householders found themselves waiting for 20 minutes to speak to West Lothian Council’s contact centre, only to be cut off.
Councillors reported fielding repeated complaints from constituents left hanging on the phone when they tried to report issues or make appointments or payments.
A meeting of the Performance Committee heard that many of drop outs were caused because of maintenance work on the telephone systems.
Councillors were discussing service complaint figures at the last committee meeting before recess when Bathgate’s councillor, Harry Cartmill said: “ I’ve had a lot of complaints recently about the call centre in terms of having to wait and then being cut off. And I mean a lot.
“I think there needs to be something to be looked at, I know there’s been issues in the last few days but I think there’s a problem constantly. They are a bit exasperated when they call anyway and then they get double annoyed when that happens.”
He added: “Certainly the call centre is an ongoing issue, but it has got progressively worse recently.”
Committee chair, Conservative Depute Provost Peter Heggie, and fellow committee member, the SNP’s Maria MacAulay, echoed the complaints they had received about customers waiting on the phone for up to 20 minutes only to be cut off and having to ring in again.
Councillor MacAulay asked: “Is there any time-line for when the telephones will be fixed?”
Rebecca Kelly, Improvement Manager, told the meeting : “ It has been an infrequent issue. Staff are fire fighting when it comes up. It’s something they are keeping a very very close eye on.”
Ms Kelly added: “ The contact centre operates a system where customers can leave a voice-mail if they have been hanging on for an extended period of time.
“Over the last month or so we have been experiencing technical difficulties on the telephony system in the contact centre mainly due to maintenance and preventative work that our IT services are working on to improve the security of the network.
“It is a temporary issue, it is something we are aware of and, where possible, messages are being put onto platforms such as Facebook to make customers aware that we are experiencing technical difficulties.
“We appreciate it can be frustrating for customers and we extend our apologies to anybody who has been affected by it. It is something we are hoping to have a long term fix.”
After the meeting, a West Lothian Council spokesperson said: “We would like to apologise to any local residents who have experienced issues contacting our customer service team in recent months.
“The first quarter of the year from 1 April is always the busiest time for the team, due to the number of annual billings and renewals from a range of council services at this time. This always generates a high volume of calls at this time, and our ability to manage these in the short-term was impacted by reduced staffing levels and a higher than normal number of essential IT upgrades to some of the systems we use.
“We have now recruited additional staff, and once both their training and the essential IT upgrades are complete, we are confident that we will be able to deliver an improved level of service for customers going forward.
“Local residents are also able to carry out a wide range of actions via our website at www.westlothian.gov.uk, including report issues, request services, make payments and find information on council services.”
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