Dacorum Borough Council Review

Really rude don't help at all. All
They want is your money. They don't tell you anything on the phone to deal with housing repairs they just put the phone down on you constantly. If you go in to the council to sort it out they just give you a number to call. It's just a circle and nothing gets done. Worst council ever.

Ridiculous robotic service .... I need to find out urgently if a tree has a preservation order on it ... Left all my details to then be told by an automated voice that I will be contacted in the next few days??? How long does it take them to check something so small?

Somehow I`m sure I would be contacted by them quicker if ever I worked on a tree that was preserved!!

useless phone system. can't speak to anyone.. Dacorum Borough Council.

Don't collect refuse
Roads are full of pot holes
Council tax is very high
Council car park at town centre is pay & display 7 days a week - pathetic
Spend money on stupid things like a metal plaques on roundabouts ( e.g. from M1 as you come in to hemel, first round about at breakspears has some metal frames, 3 of them, how much did they spend on this idiotic thing??

I waited over five minutes being told that my call would be answered and that I was 5th in the que!!
Very dissatisfied with this what can you do to talk to someone?

so glad you have put my council tax up paying for that lovely new building ! no money just wasted on unnecessary things what about emptying my black bin every week !!!

Awful automated service. Impossible to talk to a real person. Frustrating and unhelpful.

Discracefull!! In Lockdown DBC operatives Strimming, Hedge cutting and Leaf Blowing and SPITTING on Floor!!!

Hardly Essential and Discusting performance!

worst council i have ever had to deal with, unhelpful, unfriendly staff who have not been trained in, well anything it seems. Old, tired and outdated systems and services with painfully slow response times. Honestly the WORST council in the UK. AVOID IF POSSIBLE!

Several messages and calls from them about tax payments which i know are fine so who are these people...is it a scam???

Poor poor poor
No common sense since being taken over by Osbornes. Go back to how it was before. If it aint broke dont fix it

The housing manager likes to take it upon herself to illegally remove names from tenancies, then has the audacity to threaten said tenant with police removal when they try to rectify it in person, refusing to put the matter right.
Shame on you, making an innocent person homeless just because a friend asked you to.
Said person has been in no state of mind to deal with the issue further, but I hope they eventually can and that it comes back to bite you.

So I moved to the area and submitted my application for a postal vote in October. I then received an email stating it had been received and accepted a few days later in early November.
When I have come to chase why my form has not arrived I receive an email from said council that I have not applied for a postal vote hence why not receiving one, however I have evidence from that same council, from their own electoral email address telling me that it has been received!
How can you tell me it hasn't been received?! Maybe the council should check their sent email folder before responding to me! Unbelievable. I applied for my vote in plenty of time and I want it.

*edit* I must edit this review as since my complaint the council contacted me and apologised, my application was processed incorrectly on their end. They did invite me into the council offices so I could get it sorted which I was able to do. So although a mistake was made it was corrected in time. So I must give credit for that.

Disgraceful council !! been left for 2 years will black toxic mould in the corner of my living room with slugs and bugs coming through. I have 2 small children, one whom is asthmatic, the first surveyor who came out did a humidity test and said that the humidity levels are dangerous. That was January 2018. No follow up or works have been carried out. I have lost count of how many times I have called and emailed to be fobbed off to department to department. Disgraceful! Mike Penning, environmental health and the papers next I think!

Well... I am not surprised for so many bad reviews about them.

Happy to take your council tax but always miss bin collections, you will go round in circles before you speak to a human being who will be unhelpful.

Unhelpful and apathetic. After receiving a horrendously pricey council tax bill I asked about paying over the normal term of ten months but because I was 3 months into the financial year they condensed everything into the remainder. They refused to help in any way and told me to wait until it went to court. Great reason not to live in their area.

Completely inaccessible. I've tried every possible permutation of the website and automated phone lines but the information I need is simply not available. I had previously been able to get through to someone however despite assurances, there was no further contact (it's no longer possible to reach a real person). Multiple online form requests have been ignored and the automated lines require me to give the information that I'm trying to find out!

Dacorum is failing us in every way conceivable.

I have reported a fault on our toilet cistern four times now and not once has anyone got in touch or sent someone out to repair it.

My assisted collection of my green lidded bin never happens. I report it but still never happens. What are they being paid for, clearly it is not to empty bins!

disgusted by your service. it is impossible to speak to a human being, yet you will harass when you need to obtain payment relentlessly. have lived in many boroughs, this one is the worst service ever.

Extremely high Council Tax to pay for Bin Collection and a once-in-a-year grass cutting service (Boxted Road). Obviously money grabbing people, looking forward to moving out of the area! Customer service is appalling too, don't care about anything but collecting money!

rubbish customer service.... automated messages.... never respond to emails.... could go on

I have tried for nearly a week to contact your Council Tax Dept by telephone. I gave up today and wrote an email. This was acknowledged by a response email that said the department was very busy and it would take 4 weeks for your council to reply.

this is not customer service, it is appalling.

Website says forum open until six pm but staff say they close at 5:15, also closed on Saturday, some of us work for a living and can't get there during the week

Having needed on several occasions during the past year to contact a live person in a position of responsibility and with the authority to act positively with regard to several different issues, I have experienced exactly the same inefficiencies and extreme frustrations as reported by Jenny Timms. To that I would add that any request to speak directly to a responsible person is flatly refused, and promises that somebody will phone me have never been kept. I would prefer not to star-rate Dacorum's "customer service" because it deserves no stars at all. However, I must record an undeserved one-star to be able to publish my comments.

The only way to say how bad the services is to give it one star it doesn t deserve one star. It s appalling. Try to speak to someone and you just get directed round and round to an automated service. In the end I asked to speak to the Mayor by her name and got housing repairs automated of course. Terrible service

On the phone jumping from one automated system to another and you have to spell everything after you've spoken it! Then confirm it twice. What a joke!

Automated service is dreadful. Going round in circles to be hung up on or told to visit the website, where are the real humans!!. Apparently my housong officer is out 24/7 on holiday or even if i do get through get fobbed off told requests would be put in, chased up yet a year later still sat waiting for the call back. Absolutely useless council. The poor receptionist that now always gets my calls as its the only human i can seem to contact has no idea about half the things i query.

Great council, I was living under Harrow Council previously and they were absolutely awful. Dacorum are very helpful, they look after the area and keep it bright and tidy with flowers everywhere. Always respond to any issues immediately and the bin men are fab! Can't complain at all.

The automated telephone system is a complete joke!! You listen to complete rubbish for several minutes before receiving directions to absolutely useless options. It's enough to make you move to another borough!

Would be great if there online services worked, especially when the only way to get some sort of an answer from them is not talking to an actual person. Biggest joke of all

Useless. Are there humans working at the council offices? It's impossible to get a human being to answer the phone. What am I paying my council tax for? Hopeless!!

Very poor customer service. I would say avoid but you can't as is a councill. Rubbish.

Trying to contact them is a joke , automated service that sends you to . . . . . another automated service. No interest what so ever in providing a service for the average person!

This is the start of a storm, we have suffered roofing damage on our flat to the point of a 1x2 meter hole with water running down the electrics and dripping out of lights. After 40 minutes on hold, they picked up then straight away hung up on me. No conversation or anything. So unprofessional. Now left with a massive hole and a massive bill to come. What has annoyed me the most is the answering and hanging up with no explanation or justification.

Our bins go weeks without being collected can't contact anyone in the council, the phone line makes you go round in circles and I've never had an email replied to! It's unbelievable that they actually charge council tax

Charlotte - Parking team
Lazy, horrible and snide human being

Horrendous automated answering service is a nightmare, and costs you a fortune. Kept holding for ages and ages, advised by automated system that you can look up information on their website, well if I wanted to do that I would, I don t need to be told to. Hearing the same looped information for 20 minutes at a time is very frustrating. Being thanked for your patience when your patience is fast running out is infuriating, so by the time an assistance eventually answers your call, she gets it with both barrels, and it s not even her fault and 9 times out of 10, she can t help anyway as the issue no doubt will have to be passed to another department!! I do have to say the girls that tried to help me were in themselves very polite and apologetic, but I don t think they should be apologising for a rubbish system!!

I've given them one star, as i didn't have the option to give them less!

Good clean library with private workspace, wish it had a silent study area as the study area is right next to the creator space which can be noisy. Better than harpenden and luton so far.

A seriously bad service when looking for answers to questions. So automated that the public can get nowhere. Tried to find out about proxy voting and impossible. Gave up!!

Council happily take your money, but when it comes to paying it back take over 7 weeks to return any over-payment, with numerous phone calls/emails to the CEO and complains dept before MY money was rightfully returned. Had this been the other way round, the council would have sent me a court summons.
Any business in the private sector with this level of poor service would no longer be trading.

gettimg through can be a pain sometimes
But have always been helped for questions I have
And housing officers have been fantastic :)

shambolic website and phoning doesn't elicit much help.
oh and i gave one star because if you don't give any stars you can't submit the review...so that is typically broken too!

Impossible and infuriating phone system.
My experience is that there are quite a few good people at the council that are helpful. There are a few who tend to forget who they are supposed to be working for, ie the people who pay their wages.

Impossible to get through on the telephone. I have a very haphazard refuse collection. The whole street was ignored last week Ellesmere Road in Berkhamsted. Hello! Council officials are you listening? do you care? Of course you don't. . Eventually after an eternity on line pressing buttons and costing a fortune a robot informed me that if I left the bin out it would be collected in three days. This did not happen. Everyone finally gave up and dragged their bins in again. I now have a bin of stinking refuse and can find no one who can clear up the mystery of the missed collection or the garbage.

Staff lie and say they try and call you when they don't they then try and make you out to be the bad one they don't tell you when appointments for repairs are therefore u lose money from your job absolute joke if I'm honest