Our customer promise

Barking and Dagenham Council is committed to delivering excellent customer service.

Our customer promise will ensure our customers receive consistently high standards of customer service and that all sections of our diverse community are able to access our services.

It also explains what level of service you can expect from the council when you contact us.

The customer promise was developed as part of the council’s drive to put the customer first and deliver services accessible to all.

Our promise to our customers

When you contact us we aim to deal with your enquiry and provide you with the right service.

We will explain how we will handle your enquiry and when you will receive the service requested.

We will ensure you know what is expected of you.

We encourage feedback on how we deliver services to you.

We are committed to offering these customer standards:

We will:

• make our services accessible
• reduce waiting times
• understand your needs
• be clear and straightforward in our communications
• keep information about services up to date, easy to understand and accurate
• treat you with fairness and respect
• protect your personal information and confidentiality
• proactively offer you services based on your needs
• tell you exactly what you need to do and what information we need
• listen to you about ways of improving our services

We aim to:

• respond to voicemail messages within one working day
• acknowledge emails and faxes within one working day
• respond to emails, faxes and letters within 10 working days
• ensure the website and online facilities are easy to use

We ask you to:

• tell us if your personal circumstances or requirements for a service change
• keep any appointment you have with us, or let us know as soon as possible if you can’t
• treat our staff with courtesy
• tell us if you need to communicate with us in a different way