Hillingdon Council is Council of the Year (From Hillingdon Times)

Hillingdon Council is Council of the Year

2:27pm Monday 13th July 2009

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HILLINGDON has been named Local Authority of the Year for the second year running at the Good Communications Awards 2009.

The awards recognise all the communication that the council’s Contact Centre and Corporate Communications team delivers to residents.

The council were rated highly by judges in all areas of their communication which saw Hillingdon pick up the main award.

Hillingdon collected a number of other awards including Local Authority Website of the Year, Contact Centre Training Award and Telecoms Innovation Award as well as David Holdstock Head of Communications picking up the Local Government Communicator of the Year award.

The council was also commended for a number of other categories including Contact Centre of the Year, Contact Centre Technology, Mobile Technology and Website Accessibility.

Talking about the council’s win as a whole, Danny Wright, PSE Events, one of the judges, said: “Over the last four years, we have seen the communications team at Hillingdon play a major part in transforming the reputation of the borough. They fully deserve this accolade for the second year running.” – Hugh Dunnachie, chief executive of Hillingdon Council said: “This is fantastic news for the council and my congratulations go out to all those who work in the contact centre and corporate communications team.

"Added to the results of our residents’ survey which showed residents feel well informed, this shows how well we are working to get council news and information out to our residents.”

The judges said the council’s website was 'An all-round excellent Local Authority Website, visually pleasing, well constructed with a wide range of information content directly available to the citizen. This is an excellent Local Authority website, demonstrating innovative content delivery and citizen engagement.”

On the Local Government Communicator of the Year Award which was awarded to head of Communications David Holdstock, the judges said: “In May 2008, he was elected as chair of LG Communications, the national professional body for all council communicators. In that role he has worked hard to raise the standard of council communications and has championed the inclusion of other public sector bodies. David Holdstock is named Local Government Communicator of the year 2009 for his tireless work to improve the standard of communications in an under-recognised sector”

Talking about the Telecoms Innovation Award, the judges said: “Hillingdon’s clever and integrated use of telephony, SMS ad social networking sites is driving down the cost of communicating with its residents.

“With 96 per cent customer satisfaction, Hillingdon Council have successfully integrated a wide range of services in their contact centre, re-designing processes to improve the customer experience and reduce cost and establishing processes and policies to deliver high quality, through training, resource planning and performance management.”

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