Issue - meetings

(1)       The Director’s update set out some of the key issues and developments in KHS.

(2)       Traffic Management Centre  - the recent heavy rain gave an unexpected insight into life without the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) and the effect it had on Maidstone town centre.  The heavy rain led to flooding and the evacuation of the Traffic Management Centre on 15 January, and, as a result it was not able to change the traffic signal timings to respond to varying traffic flows and prevent queues building, nor to use the roadside variable message signs to inform people.  This led to pretty big queues in and around Maidstone.  Fortunately, the TMC was back up and running in two days.  This showed the benefit of the system that was now being rolled out into Canterbury and Kent Thameside.  At a recent Maidstone Business Forum meeting with the Town Centre Manager, Borough Council Members and business representatives all agreed the TMC was helping and a real benefit.  This was good news and a real sign of approval of the hard work of staff and investment by KHS.  Caroline Bruce, Acting Head of Network Management, was leading on this.

(3)       Public satisfaction tracker survey - Kent Highway Services latest residents survey was showing increasing levels of public satisfaction. Every year 1200 residents from across Kent were asked their views on the condition of roads, pavements and streetlights in the County.  The headline 2007 results were set out in the report and traditionally progress was measured through something called 'Net-Satisfaction'.  This was a figure calculated by taking the % of people who were dis-satisfied with the service from the % who were satisfied.  This gave a true reflection of the service and a balance between those happy, those un-happy and those who were not sure.  Members would remember that a positive net satisfaction in 2006 was achieved for the first time since surveys began 20 years ago.

Progress to raise the profile of the highway service was going well with branded KHS vehicles and the page every week in the Kent on Sunday paper, increased press releases about the service and not forgetting the 15,000 calls each month handled by the Contact Centre.    There was still more to do and the new shaped KHS would be ready for the start of the new financial year.  But, through all the change that had been going on in KHS over the last year, staff from across all the Alliance partners (this included Jacobs, Ringway and TSUK who made up the KHS Alliance) had shown how dedicated and committed they were by delivering a service that was recognisably better than last year, as measured by the residents who received the service.   

(4)       Dealing with service requests and calls – we were now reporting progress on dealing with service requests on a weekly basis to managers and staff.  This reporting by the new seven service groups ensured managers got regular information about how their teams were performing.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2