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Residents who behave unreasonably when dealing with South Ribble Borough Council could face restrictions on how – and how often – they can contact the authority.
The district has drawn up new rules designed to manage threatening, unpleasant and nuisance behaviour from members of the public.
Cabinet members approved the policy after hearing examples of staff being left shaken by incidents involving furniture being thrown and rooms barricaded shut at the council’s Civic Centre headquarters in Leyland.
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A range of possible sanctions could be placed on an individual deemed to have acted unreasonably. The first part of the new two-stage process involves issuing a warning and limiting the way the person can interact with the council for at least six months.
During that period, a resident might be restricted in the number of telephone calls the authority will accept from them, told to use only one specified method of communication or be allowed to contact only a single named staff member – and no other council employee.
Stage two sanctions – which can be implemented immediately as a first, as well as a last, resort – include “terminating all telephone calls” from a member of the public after first telling them to email their named contact, or requiring them to approach the council through an advocate. These measures could be triggered by “persistent or abusive” behaviour – in person or over the phone.
The authority might even take legal action against the person by issuing a community protection warning – breach of which is a criminal offence.
Cabinet member for customer and digital Colin Sharples told the meeting at which the new rules were approved that while “most of our customers do behave acceptably and treat our employees fairly and with honesty and respect…there are a minority of cases where people don’t”.
He went on to detail a series of alarming incidents in which council staff have become embroiled.
“Frustrated and angry about their housing situation, a customer barricaded themselves in an interview room. When asked to leave, they used offensive language and became aggressive, using the door to physically move our member of staff out of the…room,” Cllr Sharples said.
“[Another] customer phoned up seven times in one day in a verbally aggressive or abusive manner – with no valuable purpose. As well as leaving members of staff distressed, this persistent behaviour also caused a delay for other [people] accessing our services.
“After being told that we were unable to provide emergency accommodation [for them], a customer became violent and aggressive, kicking over boxes and chairs in the reception area and banging on desks – before hurling a chair across the room. Staff left the public area…then called the police. This behaviour left several members of staff feeling unsafe.”
Council leader Jacky Alty said that people visiting the Civic Centre are often “under great pressure”.
“Sometimes people can manage it, sometimes they can’t – but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable and our officers should suffer,” she added.
The authority will maintain a “managed customer contact register”, containing the details of all those who have had restrictions imposed upon them.
Those individuals will have no right of appeal to the council – with their only recourse against the sanctions being a complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upon whose definition of unreasonable behaviour the new policy has been based.
Cabinet member for finance and assets Matthew Tomlinson said his experience in charge of a retail business meant he knew “what customers can be like”.
“Whilst 99.9 percent of them are a joy, there is a tiny [number] that can cause real problems for people,” he said.
Bad behaviour that won’t be tolerated
The new South Ribble Borough Council customer behaviour policy defines “unreasonable customer contact” as including “behaviours or language – whether face-to-face, by telephone, on social media or written contact – that may cause our employees to feel intimidated, threatened or abused”.
Examples include:
***threats;
***verbal abuse;
***offensive language, including comments viewed to be hurtful, derogatory, or obscene;
***derogatory remarks;
***rudeness;
***making provocative statements;
***raising unsupported allegations.
Unreasonably persistent customer contact is contact that:
***does not have any serious value or purpose;
***is designed to cause disruption or annoyance;
***has the effect of harassing the council or its officers;
***can be categorised as obsessive or vexatious;
***fails to accept the council’s position.
Other behaviours considered unreasonable include, but are not limited to:
***sending high volumes of letters, emails and or phone calls;
***demanding responses within unreasonable timescales;
***insisting on speaking with specific members of staff;
***adopting a scatter-gun approach by contacting many members of staff;
***continually contacting us when we are in the process of looking at a matter;
***making many complaints about different issues or continually adding issues to the same complaint.
Rules of engagement
Stage 1 – warning and monitoring period
If a resident demonstrates unreasonable behaviour, they will be asked to change their contact with South Ribble Borough Council, with what the authority describes as “reasonable levels of expectation set out on each side”.
The options that the council may consider at this stage include:
***requesting the customer enters into an agreement about their future contact;
***placing time limits on contacts;
***restricting all or the number of telephone calls that will be accepted;
***limiting the customer to one type of contact (telephone, letter, or email);
***refusing to acknowledge or respond to any repeated complaints on closed cases;
***requiring the customer to communicate only through a single point of contact.
Stage 2 – implementing managed contact arrangements
These second-stage contact arrangements can be implemented with immediate effect – either with or without a stage 1 warning having been issued.
Options open to the council include:
***diverting the customer’s emails to a single point of contact;
***terminating all telephone calls from the customer to the council, after requesting they email the single point of contact with their enquiry;
***requiring any contacts to take place face-to-face in the presence of a third party;
***restricting any face-to-face contacts to designated council premises;
***asking the customer to contact us through an advocate;
***instigating formal legal action, such as the issuing of a community protection warning.
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