Building Standards verification performance framework - national customer satisfaction survey: survey findings 2021

9. Accessibility

9.1. Making Contact with the Building Standards Service

1. On a scale from 1 'very difficult' to 10 'very easy', customers were asked to rate how easy they found making contact with their local authority building standards service. Email is generally seen as the easiest form of contact (7.5) and customers have found it more difficult to speak to someone on the telephone (6.2) or in-person/virtually (5.3). It is perceived to be more difficult to contact local authority building standards teams than in 2020 (email: 7.9; telephone: 6.9; in-person: 6.1).

Source Pye Tait Consulting, 2021

2. Those customers finding it generally easy to make contact described good accessibility, an efficient service and few or no issues, supported by helpful, prompt and approachable staff.

3. Customers providing lower ratings have had opposing experiences, referring to unanswered emails, slow response times, staff not being available, calls going to voicemail and messages being unanswered. Where customers referred to lockdown and Covid-19, some felt that communication was good in spite of the prevailing conditions, while others said that lockdown meant officers were impossible to reach.

4. Just under half of surveyed customers (48%) agree that building standards service staff are accessible if they want to meet with them in person or virtually. This is a decrease from 51% in 2020 and 58% in 2019.^[13] Applicants are more satisfied than agents, with 49% and 43% in agreement, respectively (Figure 9.1.b).

Source Pye Tait Consulting, 2021

5. Two thirds of customers (66%) agree that building standards service staff are approachable. This is a slight decrease from 72% in 2020. Agents (68%) are slightly more likely than applicants (65%) to agree on this (Figure 9.1.c).

Source Pye Tait Consulting, 2021