South Burnett Regional Council divided over new policy

A new policy has been introduced to manage “unreasonable” customers, despite one councillor revealing some residents are waiting up to three months for a council response.

A new policy to manage “unreasonable and vexatious” customers has divided councillors while community members wait up to three months for council’s response to their enquiries.

A new South Burnett Regional Council policy to manage “vexatious and “unreasonable” customers was met with divided councillor opinions at Wednesday’s meeting.

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Kathy Duff strongly expressed her lack of support of the motion.

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A council spokesman said the Unreasonable Customer Conduct policy will be managed by limiting council interactions with an unreasonable customer.

“Unreasonable behaviour is conduct that is unreasonable in all circumstances regardless of how stressed, angry or frustrated that a customer is,” a spokesman said.

“Incidents will be managed by restricting who the customer has contact with, restricting the subject matter of communications that Council will consider and respond to, curbing the frequency of contact or limiting the locations where council will conduct face-to-face interviews.

“Council representatives and members of the public have a right to dignity, physical and emotional safety and respect.

“If a customer’s conduct is considered unreasonable council is justified and authorised to take reasonable and proportionate steps to restrict or terminate contact.”

A report said the police was in the interest of staff health and safety and to improve efficiency.

Mrs Duff was among only two councillors to vote against the policy.

“We still need to a lot of work in the space of getting back to customers,” Mrs Duff said.

“Sometimes customers are waiting up to three months for a response from council.”

The policy states five categories of unreasonable conduct as “unreasonable demands, unreasonable persistence, unreasonable lack of co-operation, unreasonable behaviours and unreasonable arguments”.