SOME people calling Newport City Council have been left hanging on the phone for up to 40 minutes, figures released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed.

Between January and June the council received 126,833 calls, 38 per cent of which were abandoned, with 48,731 people hanging up the phone before anyone answered.

In May 2022, the average wait to get through to the council tax line was 41 minutes – this did decrease to 32 minutes in June.

Michael Enea, a representative for the Conservatives in St Julians, said: “The stats are pretty shocking.”

He added: “They have a responsibility to offer a good service, some people are paying more than £1,000 a year in council tax, at the very least they should be taking on extra staff to take the calls.”

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Mr Enea revealed that the council’s phone line had gone down 11 times between January and October of this year.

Mr Enea said: “Maybe the council should learn from other contact centres, upgrade their IT systems, hire more staff, and start answering the phone.

“The staff that do answer the phone are always helpful, professional and efficient. We just need more of them.”

A spokesperson for Newport City Council said: “The council tries to keep disruption on our phone lines to a minimum. Where an issue causes unscheduled down-time, we will work with our telephony suppliers to resolve it as quickly as possible. These are usually resolved within a couple of hours.

“During the three-month period from April to June this year, our council tax enquiry line was exceptionally busy. This was not only with council tax account queries, which we would expect to have in a new billing year, but also with queries regarding the Welsh government cost-of-living support grant, which our council tax team were administering on the government’s behalf for Newport residents.

“Calls about the cost-of-living grant also meant our main contact centre enquiry line was extremely busy, resulting in longer waiting times.

“Many services that the council provide can be accessed online, and we would always encourage customers to use our online services if they can, to keep phone lines clearer for those who would prefer to speak to one of our officers.”

The council has recently launched a survey with the aim of improving its communication. It can be found at https://tinyurl.com/2dabxuuu

Problems have also been raised with contacting Newport Live, a not-for-profit organisation that runs services such as the Newport Centre and the Riverfront Theatre on behalf of the council.

Peter Hughes, director at Denmark Street Big Band, said he found communication with Newport Live “shocking”.

Mr Hughes has said he had attempted to contact the organisation to discuss bringing the show ‘Celebrating 60 golden years of Dame Shirley Bassey and Sir Tom Jones’ – which recently performed at Blackwood Miners Institute - to Newport.

He said: “When you’re first in the queue and you have been holding for 20 minutes, you think; what’s going on?

“Newport is missing out – how many other people have given up with the phone lines?”

Mr Hughes said he has dealt with councils across the UK and has never had this problem before.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service made a call to Newport Live’s customer service number - which was answered after ten and a half minutes, despite being told we were in position ‘one’ in the queue from the start of the call.

When asked to comment on the delays, Joanne David, marketing manager at Newport Live, apologised and said: “This isn’t the level of service that our team strives to provide.”

Ms David added: “Like many businesses we are currently dealing with some challenging situations. Whilst we plan for various scenarios like staff absences, complex calls and high call volumes they can at times have an impact on our response times and call backs.

“As a charitable trust we’re reliant on the support of our customers, members and local communities and value feedback so we can take steps where possible to improve. We thank you for bringing this to our attention and we will raise with our customer services team.”

Other methods of contacting Newport Live are via email on customerservice@newportlive.co.uk or by using the chat function on the website.