Our support policy outlines how we respond to requests and prioritise the work we do.
Types of request
You can submit three different types of request:
- Promote a specific project, campaign, event, or success
- Provide information about a council service, policy, strategy, or guidelines
- Make an admin request.
We can’t action any work if you don’t submit a request in this way.
Once you have submitted a request, you’ll receive an email confirming it has been received and we will be back in touch when we have reviewed your request.
We might need to ask a few more questions and once we have a full understanding of your request, we’ll confirm the next steps. We’ll work with you to find the best solution.
When reviewing your request, we’ll check it against our current priorities agreed with the Council Management Team. Right now, we’re focusing on communicating COVID-19 public health information and on supporting our recovery from the impact of the pandemic across our communities, our businesses and our organisation. You can check the response times and how we prioritise requests on our Support Policy.
Response to requests
The teams monitor requests Monday to Thursday 8am to 5pm and Friday 8am to 4pm.
We prioritise requests for support that align to the council’s priorities and agreed Marketing and Communications Plan. The more notice and detail you can provide, the better. It’s important that you plan ahead.
Please allow around 10 days for a first response and longer for the work to be actioned.
Please be aware: current response times will be around 15 days for a first response and longer for the work to be actioned if you want to publish digital content on our websites and need input from the Digital Experience team. This to help the Digital Experience team prioritise the development of a new Renfrewshire.gov.uk as part of the Digital Experience programme.
We’ll come back to you sooner if your request is considered as an urgent priority. Last minute requests can only be considered in exceptional circumstances.
The following information outlines how quickly we aim to respond to a request and the criteria we’ll use to categorise it.
Prioritisation criteria
We have five levels of priority. To decide which priority level your request will be at, we first understand if it’s within the council’s priorities or not. We then check how many users or services it affects. Does it affect:
- most users and/or services?
- some users and/or services?
- very few users and/or services?
Finally, we look at the impact.
Significant impact
- likely to cause reputational harm
- contravenes our legal obligations
- stops use of services
- stops service delivery
- highly likely to cause large financial loss to the Council.
Some impact
- Moderate risk to Council reputation
- doesn’t contravene any legal obligations
- changes or interrupts use of services
- changes or interrupts service delivery
- may result in some low financial loss to the Council.
No impact
- no risk to Council reputation
- doesn’t contravene any legal obligations
- doesn’t affect use of services
- doesn’t affect service delivery
- will not result in financial loss to the Council.
First response times
| Impact / Users | Affects very few users and/or services | Affects some users and/or services | Affects most users and/or services |
| No impact | Low (response within 15 business days) | Normal (response within 10 business days) | Medium (response within 5 business days) |
| Some impact | Normal (response within 10 business days) | Medium (response within 5 business days) | High (response within 2 business days) |
| Significant impact | Medium (response within 5 business days) | High (response within 2 business days) | Critical (response within 1 business day) |
Responses to large pieces of work
A large piece of work requires more than one member of staff and more than five business days to be completed. This could be the creation of a website or a significant communications campaign.
If we categorise your request as a large piece of work, we aim to contact you within 15 business days to discuss your requirements. We will then consider the request in line with our current workload and priorities to establish whether it will go ahead or not.