Westminster City Council

Great service helpful people polite staff I don't see why they get negative reviews from scroungers. Good communication highly professional team.

First off you’d be forgiven for confusing this new City Hall frontage with two other buildings with similar glass revolve entry doors and grey n White corporate ambience. This is therefore the third of its kind on Victoria Street heading west to east from Victoria Rail/ tube station. Once inside it’s all turn stiles and secure conscious reception staff who need to thaw out ! I ‘melted’ down for them when they simply ignored the obvious solution of using a telephone to check the departments we were visiting, and our appointments when one of their terminals was down. You do not create a bottleneck at 9 am in a so called ‘accessible’ public building. The joke was we then waltzed through the barriers without a bag check. Really !! The signage for where to go was appalling. As an Autistic person lead to rely on appealing to staff already climbing into the lifts about which lift covered the 19 th floor and how did we operate them without a key card. It’s rather ironic that was there to attend an equality and diversity event. I had plenty of material for it. I’m sure that a lot of my comments will be taken on board and significant changes for user friendly entry and navigation of this building will be implemented soon. The lifts are smooth if rather small, the floor materials seamlessly switch between cement flagging to smooth carpet tiling to laminate in the cafe area and the glass partitions are largely matte or etched finishes. I would argue again with signage when it’s applied to such chic toilet facilities. One is never enough if the doors to the cubicles are right on the corridor and they look like full length cleaning cupboards. I can’t say the view through the full length cathedral style windows on the 19 th floor didn’t make me feel queasy so if height adverse avoid standing too close. Distract yourself ! The views over Westminster Cathedral and other sites in the distance are impressive though and imagine the lights at night are pretty stunning.

Noisy control division is literally useless. Either they come too late or cannot resolve a constant noise for days. Complete waste of tax. The security noise from the ground floor store (GANNI, 15 floral Street) has been going off whole time for two days so far and they can't resolve this problem. Totally impotent group of people.

Good The staff I spoke to carty and grace were efficient and polite. ALL ON RELATIVELY LOW COUNCIL TAX.So much for all the moaners.

Before we got married, we had to come here. It was quite interesting experience... Staff was very nice and helpful! Building was build in 1965, 19-storey Westminster City Hall is home to Westminster City Council (over 5000 employees).

The worst Council I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. The staff lack basic customer service skills. They are rude and unbelievably incompetent. What happened to basic human kindness? Why do all your staff seem to have an attitude? We get spoken to rudely and with utter complacency. I just don’t understand it. Train your staff on how to deal with people - train them in customer service and maybe your reputation as a Council will improve.

Overall decent council even though you pay a high council tax. They actually do things in the area that can be seen. Roads are taken care off potholes Te filled. Staff are abit stuck up. But not incompetent. But I guess they cant as they cover the area off Buckingham palace so they must have some responsibilities or they will get sacked. Over better council then some out there. At messy they dint just sit around drinking coffee and eating donuts.

In this specially unprecedented stressful times when you feel suicidal they will put the last nail into your coffin... not responding, unbelievable what a con we got into. The government help - is an absolute con.

Like a broken pencil.....pointless

Never pay for any money to WCC in advance. Ever. I was selling my mother's flat (she passed). I was advised to pay the entire years council tax, because I had issues collecting mail and they would not forward the bills. I was advised that once the sale went through it is an automatic website process to reclaim the outstanding. RUBBISH. I tried twice on the website, got receipt numbers, then rang through after a month and went through the same process again with an adviser, I then wrote in another a month later, then complained (yep another month later), was then (AGAIN) asked for my bank details (4th time), then after 5 months, I finally got through to a person who had a clue (in complaints), I was told only a cheque could be posted. We then started the NEGOTIATION on how much they owed me, because they had charged me £80 for a late payment of 2 weeks, which lead to the 5 months, 5 letters, 7 phone calls, 4 times for bank details (for which I cannot charge them) and the process that has a cumulative wait period for emails to be answered by random people. In the end I got far less refund but was so tired of the stupidity I gave in. BTW the refund was a bank transfer not a cheques as promised. Hmmm. I know you are going to say "You are bonkers. it is obviously an isolated case". WRONG !!! read on. I did a stupid thing and paid in advance for my major works. It was readjusted and WOW I was due a refund. I am not joking, it was worse than the above episode. I received the money, but it took another 3-4 months through the complaints process, because their customer engagement process (particularly wait times for responses) is a farce and is cumulative, and you cannot write or speak to a person directly. Example; write email, standard 10-15 days response. Person A responds with normally bad information and requires you to answer a question . You respond to A but it resets back to the main pool and the 10-15 days response. Worse still is A N Other person responds with either differing information or contrary information to person A. You phone and ask to talk to A, you cannot, you give them your details and they say they will get A to phone you back as they cannot answer for them. You guessed it, A never rings back. And this merry-go-round go on with the music to the Magic Roundabout playing in the background. "you are not being fair Mr Lane....." I hear you say. WRONG. !! Try getting the communal aerial cable connected to your address which already exists and is hanging freeling in the air outside the window. 9 months of letters !!! At one stage the contractor was there but could not do the work as at last minute WCC or their dept had not sent the correct email to authorise the work. 'Carry on Westminster' !!!! There is hope, do not give up. Read on..... In response to this problem I cancelled my direct debits, and with 36 hours I received a personal call from WCC asking me why. I explained. Then I said I will wait for a bill, just before the deadline where I receive a charge, I will pay the minimum required. The person was unhappy at this. I wonder what would if everyone tried this approach. Think on.......... I think I can understand that process driven government is a thing, but it's the attitude of the people hiding behind it which is awful.

Almost funny in a weird way - 65GBP fine because I turned right when it was forbidden. Why? because there were roadworks and Marylebone road was blocked to the left so I had no other choice... Answer from the great and wise westminster city council employees: Sorry sir it was still forbidden to turn right. OK, great, get a life

Ok

This council sent me a PCN regarding a prohibited turn at Gerrard place in Chinatown. However, there is no lights with the signs, whoever can see that during night time? Such a shame that the money is paid to here. And, £65 can purchase a high quality photo rather than a photo taken from 10 years ago camera.

If only i could score a 0, the service overall is disgraceful and they claim to have a housing crisis yet no one with common sense to easily solve them, i've just sat in my house and solved two problems for them already. Poor system from such a wealthy borough.

The website is hopeless. Try to use the dedicated button to report an abandoned bicycle and it just hangs and then comes up with an error message.

The worst service ever! The authentifications don’t work, the website is terrible and so is the whole experience. Staff is uncompetent and non-cooperative.

This council just let to Whiteley chop down all the trees around.. they are not decoration items, they were huge old healthy trees and they choped down all of them between people sweares and screams.. what a shame

Friendly phone operators but shameful that one of the wealthiest boroughs in the country does NOT collect organic waste, even from flats with gardens. We are told to put it in black bin bags with general waste. I have a garden with vastly too much leaf fall for my compost heap. It is heartbreaking and infuriating that my green inner city patch is contributing to methane / greenhouse gases.

Council Tax department purely and utterly incompetent: overcharging, not answering, ignoring complaints, taking months to 'solve' the issue, never apologising... The minimum as a civil servant is to be at least courteous if you can't be efficient and actually solve your own mistakes in an efficient manner.

The office block is under refurbishment and closed to the public; after negotiating the 'your call is very important to us' options you can speak to a person, they can't tell you where they are. Their job is to fob you off, clearly they've proved that they can run the council from anywhere via telephones and the internet so the building could be sold off and the staff relocated to a low wage economy area, maybe bringing employment to a jobs blackspot and fuelling the northern powerhouse, I recommend Middlesbrough.

The horrendous irony of the planning department of an important, beautiful and historic borough being headquartered in this beastly construction shows a hippocratic truth. The whole area around this site is out of place with the magnificence of Westminster, yet, it is expanding and allowing high-rise blocs to deface the skyline of important heritage areas such as Buckingham Palace. In place of charming harmony of the mixed residential and commercial properties originally opposite Victoria station and leading to Buckingham Palace Road we now have some second-rate architects wacky design that eliminates any cohesion in the area. These buildings stand out and may win some recognition for interior comfort but the facades are not fit for the area. It is easy to blame greedy developers for all of this but the fault lies with the policy makers who allow these out of proportion, cheaply built (per cubic metre), eyesores. I am not against development but this needs to be done responsibly with stylistic requirements and height restrictions as this is in other areas of the City. All that said at least they are better than City of London and the London Borough of Wandsworth.

They are horrible people. Greedy and stupid. Computer says no attitude.

“Joy On Earth” by Zhao Cong

Council that hates cyclists

Disgrace

Refurbishment project

A monstrous office building.