Council breaks record with pathway customer requests

A DEPARTMENT within the Toowoomba Regional Council has completed a record number of customer requests in the past 12 months.

Toowoomba City Hall.

A DEPARTMENT within the Toowoomba Regional Council has completed a record number of customer requests in the past 12 months.

Infrastructure general manager Mike Brady said the TRC's transport and drainage planning branch completed 5779 customer requests for pathways in the 2019-20 financial year.

Mr Brady said the figures were up 10 per cent from the previous period.

"It's a 10 per cent increase from the previous financial year and in the past six or seven years it's more than doubled, the number of requests," he said at last week's ordinary meeting.

"A couple of interesting statistics is cost - (in road operations) we've done over 2600 customer inquiries, which is 14,000 man hours (which) equates to just over $840,000.

"It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort and as you can see, each customer inquiry averages 5.5 hours, but that just gives you an idea of the level and effort that our road ops team puts in on an annual basis.

"They do a great job and as you can imagine, some of those inquiries can be quite simple, anything from somebody wanting you to paint their awning, through to the Coles development out at Glenvale, which becomes very complex."

Mr Brady said the achievement was significant, since responding to customer requests was a rolling requirement that never ended.

"It's one of those efforts where you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, because there are always 150 coming in every week and they've got to keep chewing away," he said.