DUNFERMLINE-BASED council call centre employees are dealing with a “staffing crisis” which is affecting their mental health, it has been claimed.

A member of staff, who did not want to be named, contacted the Press after pleas to management to sort the situation out had proved unsuccessful.

As well as creating stressed-out workers, the lack of manpower at New City House means that anyone trying to phone the Fife Council’s environment, housing, faults and repairs, passes and concessions or money and payments lines can find themselves with a wait of between 30 and 45 minutes.

“This is due to a major staffing crisis at the contact centre which is only going to get worse as the dozen employees that are left become increasingly stressed at the workload and demands made by management,” said the employee.

“Staff members have got to a point where they have ended up in tears or are now going sick from work due to stress. They all feel they have no support and if concerns are raised, they just get a shrug of ‘Just get on with it’.”

The employee said the contact centre handles more than 1,000 calls a day but claimed that, on some occasions, there would only be three or four people available to answer which resulted in frustrated tenants and customers taking their anger out on the staff.

“Despite the obvious fact the team is on their knees, they have been told that they have no plans to recruit, leaving the team that is left to plug the gaps.

"Supervisors have repeatedly asked the staff that are left to take shorter lunches or come in earlier for shifts or stay extra.

"Despite the ridiculous amount of calls a decimated team are expected to answer, management have agreed to take on another line of business and handle Scottish Welfare Fund calls.

"People’s mental health is now being directly affected by the lack of action by senior management. They should provide an efficient first point of contact for the residents of Fife and a safe, rewarding workplace for their staff.”

Diarmuid Cotter, Fife Council customer service delivery manager, said they, like all council services, were having to make savings and balance their resources.

“We have reconfigured teams in the contact centre to manage calls as best we can and to ensure that we can still respond to urgent calls from our most vulnerable clients such as community alarm responses, health and social care issues or those needing crisis grants from the Scottish Welfare Fund,” he said.

“However, there’s no doubt that this is placing a strain on teams dealing with a large volume of routine calls, fault reports etc – as well as impacting the level of customer service residents are experiencing when they call in.

“We are working on ways to make the council a more modern and accessible organisation so that people can carry out more business online at any time of day or night.

"This will be more convenient for many people as well as reducing the number of calls we need to take. In the meantime, we can only urge people to check Fifedirect for information and use online services wherever it is currently possible.

“We are doing our best to support staff. Managers are monitoring call volumes closely and endeavouring to get the balance of resources right across our teams.

"We will be recruiting some additional resource, which will not plug all the gaps, but will help alleviate the issue.”