Slough's council desk at the Britwell Centre stays on after seeing 940 residents in six months, nine in ten about housing. The full weekly timetable.

The council desk inside the Britwell Centre is staying. A six-month pilot that put Slough Borough Council officers in the building five days a week saw 940 residents face to face, and it will now continue. The council says it is looking at doing the same elsewhere in the town. (Slough Borough Council, 27 August 2026)

The service, called SBC at The Britwell Hub, opened in January at the Britwell Centre on Wentworth Avenue, SL2 2DS.

Nine in ten of those 940 visits were about housing: repairs, the housing register, leaseholder matters and applying for a council home.

That is the finding worth pausing on. The desk was set up to test whether people would use a face to face service at all. What it actually measured is how hard Slough residents find it to sort out a housing problem by phone or online.

Chart of the 940 residents seen at the Britwell Hub in six months, split into complex, progress chasing and transactional cases
What the Britwell desk actually dealt with in its first six months. Chart by Slough Daily.

What the 940 visits were

The council splits the six-month caseload three ways:

  • 480 (51%) complex cases, which it defines as multi-step, multi-team or needing a specialist
  • 234 (25%) progress chasing, meaning follow-ups, status checks and repeat enquiries
  • 226 (24%) transactional, the simple one-touch enquiries resolved first time

Only a quarter of visits were the sort of thing a website form handles well. Half needed more than one team. A further quarter were people coming in to find out what had happened to something they had already asked for.

Councillor Gurcharan Manku, lead member for customer experience and access, said the service “has proven to be extremely popular”. He added that it had been “so successful in helping residents sort out their most complex issues, with us now having the data to prove how it has worked, that we are now looking at having similar set ups elsewhere in the town.”

The timetable

This is the timetable the council published when the service launched, and it has not published a revised one alongside the announcement that the pilot continues. (Slough Borough Council, 5 February 2026)

Service When
Customer advisors Mon and Tue 9.30am to 5pm; Wed and Thu 10am to 5pm; Fri 9.30am to 4.30pm
Housing advice and temporary accommodation Tuesdays 10am to 2pm
Neighbourhood services, for council tenants Wed and Thu 10am to 2pm
Leaseholder services, for council leaseholders Wednesdays 10.30am to 3pm
Housing repairs Wednesdays 10am to 12 noon
Debt and welfare advice, including benefits Thursdays 9.30am to 5pm

Appointments can be booked for all the housing sessions. Walk-ins are taken by the customer advisors.

The Britwell Centre itself is open 8am to 11pm every day. It has 10 parking bays and 3 disabled bays. (Slough Borough Council, Britwell Centre)

Alongside the council desk, the building houses:

  • Britwell Library
  • learning and meeting rooms, and a community garden
  • a doctors’ surgery
  • Amana’s Journey Café, run by volunteers, with the profits going to community projects
  • the volunteer-run Britwell Community Hub, whose activity, food and friendship sessions run on Thursdays

What it means for you

You do not have to live in Britwell to use it. When the service opened, the council said everyone was welcome to come in wherever in the borough they live. If a housing problem has been going round in circles by phone, this is the one Slough council desk where several teams sit in the same building on the same day.

Pick your day by what you need. Housing repairs is a two-hour Wednesday morning window. Leaseholder services is Wednesdays only. Debt and welfare advice is Thursdays. Turning up on the wrong day gets you a customer advisor rather than the specialist team.

Book ahead for the housing sessions. The council takes appointments for all of them through its Britwell Hub appointments form, reachable from the book an appointment page.

Check before you travel. The timetable above is the last one Slough Borough Council published, in February. If your visit depends on a specific team being there, ring customer services on 01753 475111 first.

The council’s main customer services phone lines run Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 9am to 5pm, Wednesday 10am to 5pm and Friday 9am to 4.30pm. (Slough Borough Council, customer services)

Britwell has had a run of council attention this year. We covered the Pride in Place board seats for Britwell and Foxborough and the £1.5m impact fund behind them. If your visit is about the housing register, note that everyone on the list has to re-apply by November.