Town centre offices to close

At the start of the pandemic we closed our town centre offices to make things safer for our staff and our customers. 

In the last few months, we have carried out a review of how our tenants are interacting with us and have taken the decision not to reopen our offices at Windsor Road Neath and Forge Road Port Talbot.

The pandemic itself and the closure of the offices for over two years has led to our tenants engaging with us differently. They no longer rely on the office kiosks to make cash payments, instead they’ve switched to direct debit, online, telephone or PayPoint facilities at post offices and shops within their communities.

Universal Credit has also led to more of our tenants being online to access these payments, paying bills, accessing bank accounts and shopping online too. There has been an explosion in online use even in our communities that didn’t wish to do things digitally pre pandemic so the need for the in town offices has reduced dramatically.

Gemma Fouracre Head of Property and Land Services said:
“The pandemic has allowed us to re-evaluate what our tenants need and how we can deliver services differently.

Going forward, we will develop a new digital strategy where we will engage with tenants to help support them to interact with us online, making it easier for them to access the internet and do things digitally.

The rollout of customer services webchat toward the end of this year will also give people another way to communicate with us, along with the development of self-help information on our website.

The Sustainable Communities aspect of our corporate plan will see us being even more involved in our communities, taking our services to our tenants instead of expecting them to come to us, which for those in valley areas has always been challenging.

Holding community events within our towns and villages will help us build relationships with a large proportion of tenants right across the borough and we look forward to embracing this new way of working.”