The council's community alarm and emergency out-of-hours service - which includes call outs for noise nuisance, exposed street lamp wires, and housing repairs - was outsourced to the Forest of Dean council in April 2008 saving Blaenau Gwent £376,369.
In early 2009 the Forest of Dean announced it was closing its call centre, and the service was given to Worcester Telecare services, but a report due to be delivered to Blaenau Gwent's executive on January 26 says that since the private firm took over the contract, there have been a number of problems with the out of hours service.
The council's contact centre manager Mel Harvard said there had been issues with long call wait times to get through to the service, a lack of knowledge of the local area and reports of incorrect procedures being following when dealing with calls.
The report said these issues had been taken up with Worcester Telecare, but the council was also reviewing the possibility of bringing the service back in house after the council transferred its housing stock to Tai Calon Housing.
The report said that since the transfer in July 2010, the volume of calls to the council's community alarm and emergency out of hours service had dropped by 75 per cent, and the authority would now be able to bring the service back in-house at no additional cost.
If the proposals are approved by the council's executive committee, the service will be run by its existing staff.
The executive committee will vote on the proposals on Wednesday.
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Quelle/Source: South Wales Argus, 23.01.2011
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