FEEDBACK from customers is helping leisure centres across the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire to improve their services.

And to encourage people to have their say, bosses have made it a smiling issue.

The four centres – situated in Bedale, Northallerton, Stokesley and Thirsk - are now adopting the council’s established and successful “GovMetric” system to measure customer satisfaction ratings.

Every time a customer visits one of the centres or uses their websites they are asked to give feedback through the system.

And a series of smiley faces are then used to rank the service - and when customers are dissatisfied comments can be added.

Customers visiting the centres themselves will be able to use a touch screen panel before leaving to give their views.

And each of the websites has a page with a side snippet with smiley face buttons to press.

The new system will allow comments to be spilt into website issues which will be managed by the central team and operational feedback will go directly to the centres for attention.

The authority claims that implementing the additional GovMetric service will streamline the existing feedback systems and give customers the opportunity to make their views known.