Shopped! Spy-in-the-cab bid to keep council staff on the job
BIG Brother is watching council handymen and women.
A new computer system will alert bosses if Kirklees builders, joiners or handymen are driving their vans to shopping centres and cafes instead of customers.
The system is designed to prevent council employees spending hours in cafes instead of working.
Stuart Mellor, business and support services manager for Kirklees Building Services, said: “The vans are fitted with a tracking device. That’s something we have been wanting to do for a long time but it’s now a council directive.”
Mr Mellor said council bosses would now get an alert if the vans were driven to areas they shouldn’t be.
He said: “Cafes are the bane of my life. First thing in the morning I get a call to say, ‘There’s three of your vans outside a cafe’.”
He said there was nothing wrong with an employee stopping for a bite to eat. But he added: “If they’re there for a particular period that’s fine but if they’re there for two hours, that’s a problem. We need to know what they’re doing.
“If they are somewhere they shouldn’t be, like outside of Kirklees or at a shopping centre, we get an alert.
“The tracker tracks the vehicle in every respect so, if it stops, it records it.”
Mr Mellor said the vans were also fitted with a new hand-held computer device which would give workers the location of one job at a time.
This means employees can now only complete tasks in the order specified by their bosses, rather than the way that would best suit them.
He said: “When they start their engine we should be able to see where they started it from and where they stopped to do jobs. That should tally with the hand-held unit.”
Mr Mellor told a meeting of Batley Carr and Purlwell Tenants and Residents’ Association that all the changes had been brought in to improve the service to Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing (KNH) tenants, schools and council buildings.
He said whereas KNH tenants used to be told a building services employee would be visiting either in the morning or afternoon, now they could choose a more specific time slot. And he said each customer would get a call the day before to remind them of the visit and another call when the van was on its way.
The union Unite has held a meeting to discuss the changes this week.
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Weather for Batley
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -3 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Light rain
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Wind Speed: 8 mph
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