Whitby's representatives on North Yorkshire Council say there have been only a few early issues with the transition to the new authority.
Councillor Neil Swannick represents Whitby Streonshalh division on the new authority, he admits that there were a few glitches that they had to deal with when the council took control at the start of April.
The new council will take responsibility for local services after borough and district councils were abolished.
Whitby West Councillor Phil Trumper insists that despite early issues, the council is ready to benefit all communities.
When asked whether he was pleased with how the transfer had gone so far, the Conservative run council’s leader, Councillor Carl Les said:
“Yes. It has gone surprisingly well, but with the amount of effort put in by Richard Flinton and his team I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“We always said if you are going to chose a time to do local government reorganisation you wouldn’t necessarily be coming out of a pandemic with a war going on in Ukraine and various other things happening.
“You wouldn’t chose to launch on April 1, when council tax bills are going out for a new authority and people renew their garden waste collection waste collections with the new authority, but still have phone numbers for the old authorities.”
Labour group leader Councillor Steve Shaw Wright said while the unitary authority appeared to be “generally working”, its call centre had been “an absolute abomination”.
He added:
“Selby Town Council just can’t do anything because people have been forever ringing them up because North Yorkshire’s call centre doesn’t work.”
Green group leader Councillor Kevin Foster said:
“This has been a massive undertaking and on the whole things have gone very well. There’s still lots of work to do, but if you’d asked me if I’d have accepted this when the changeover went in I would have grabbed it with both hands.”
Liberal Democrat group leader Councillor Bryn Griffiths said residents struggling to find phone numbers to contact the unitary, which was “trying to force people to use the internet a lot”, and delays in answering, had represented “a mixed start” for the unitary.
He added: “With a big organisation of about 10,000 employees there are bound to be a few hiccups.”
Independent group leader Councillor Stuart Parsons added: “Things could have gone better, but it also could have gone a lot worse.”
He said the centralised call centre had not appeared to work as well as “phoning the old numbers for district council call centres”.
Coun Parsons said:
“It’s been mainly hiccups, nothing major appears to have gone wrong, which is very comforting. It’s just a question of trying to iron out the hiccups and ensuring services improve considerably.”
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