Pest Control On-Line

e-Pest Control Launched by West Dunbartonshire Council

At West Dunbartonshire Council we recognise the importance of our customers and that is why we are working hard in the implementation of the Customer First initiative.

Customer First is a Scottish Government sponsored programme developed in partnership with all 32 Scottish local authorities. It is managed, with the support of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE), under the direction of the Improvement Service (IS). It aims to deliver 'first time' public services by re-designing them around customers' needs.

The programme supports the principles of: easier to access, better integrated, local services; effective collaboration across the public sector; better use of public resources; high standards of public service; and willingness to innovate and learn from others.

The programme also underpins the Scottish Government's commitment to work in partnership with Scotland's local authorities to:

• deliver more convenient and responsive public services;
• encourage the take up of online access to services;
• ensure that at least 75% of core service requests can be dealt with at the first point of contact.

The Environmental Health Section has launched Pest Control On-Line, the first integrated on-line council service, enabling both the service request and the payment to be made during the same transaction.  Residents of the area can request and pay for services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

“This is a first class example of West Dunbartonshire Councils commitment to our customers, providing a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year access to booking services – we are using  technology to provide better services to the people of West Dunbartonshire”. commented Councillor Craig McLaughlin.  

“West Dunbartonshire Council are committed to providing first class services to our customers and will continue to strive to enable easy access to these services” commented Patricia Marshall, Manager of ICT.  

The Council’s website has had online forms and facility to pay bills online for several years but this recent improvement allows us to link the Council’s payment system to existing forms.  There will now be a programme of work to extend this integration to other online service requests and systems in the coming months.