Happy Birthday To The PoPs

Did you know you don’t have to travel far to get almost all Mid Beds District Council services? Last week the Citizone Points of Presence (PoPs) in Woburn Street, Ampthill and Saffron Road, Biggleswade celebrated over 24,000 visits in their first year with a big birthday cake.

Set up to provide easy town centre access to council services they have proved so popular that Mid Beds staff are helping South Beds District Council set up two more in Leighton Linslade and Houghton Regis. In November Her Majesty The Queen was shown how the video link from Mid Beds Chicksands offices to the Citizone PoPs worked.

At the Citizone PoPs local people can:

¨make planning applications

¨check council tax payments

¨make non-cash payments

¨get housing and council tax benefits advice

¨report problems like fly tipping, broken street lights

¨obtain recycling advice

¨report pot-holes, damaged signs and other highways issues

¨find out about planned road works, and road gritting routes in winter.

In Ampthill the Citizen’s Advice Bureau also use of part of the building and in Biggleswade the Citizone PoP is housed in the new Town Council offices enabling County, District and Town services to be brought together.

The Citizone PoPs were launched to improve local people’s contact with Mid Beds and this included a new contact centre (call 01462 611222 or 08452 304040) and a comprehensive search website – www.citizone.org . This site enables people to search the websites of all public organisations in and around Bedfordshire including local councils, the Police, Fire Service and health. Local people can also e-mail customer.services@midbeds.gov.uk and get Mid Beds’ services and information 24 hours, 7 days a week visit www.midbeds.gov.uk .

In June 2006 Mid Beds moved its new building at Chicksands and already 13500 people have made use of the extra point of contact by visiting the building to discuss planning applications and report problems.

Hannah Richards, Customer Services Manager, said: “Almost everyone lives within a few miles of one of our Points of Presence and so can easily pop in to get all their District Council services without needing to travel to our offices in Chicksands.