Agenda item

The Head of Communications and Customer Experience presented a quarterly report, covering the period of April to June 2021, which provided an update on complaints and Freedom of Information requests received by the Council.

In the last quarter, there had been 69 Stage 1 complaints, 15 of which had since escalated to Stage 2 complaints. Members were provided with a breakdown and further information relating to the complaints received.  Additional details were also provided on the lessons learnt when dealing with past complaints and improvements that have been introduced to the complaints procedure. Further work was being undertaken on the complaints system to provides officers with more information relating to the complaints received.

The Head of Communications and Customer Experience offered to send out a note to Councillors after of the meeting on how the Council uses complaints to improve its services to aid in their understanding of the process.  This offer was accepted.

In the last quarter 91 Freedom of Information requests had been received, with the majority received in respect of Business Rates, Public Health and Waste and Recycling.  Information on the responses to these requests was provided.

The subsequent discussion included reference to the following:

·         information relating to the number of complaints that proceeded from Stage 2 to the Local Government Ombudsman was not collated quarterly but there was an intention to include this in future reports;

·         in respect of providing detail in respect of the nature of complaints received, the ongoing refinement to the complaints system should be able to produce this information in the future;

·         in respect of compliments received, an internal medium was used to publicise this information and it may be possible to bring a general summary of this to Committee;

·         it was requested that details relating to the outcome from a complaint be made available, such as amounts of compensation paid or actions taken to address issues raised in the complaint.  It was noted that managers were involved in the complaints process to deal with any repeat issues or to provide additional training or praise to Officers as appropriate;

·         it was confirmed that there is a statutory policy in place for Housing complaints which makes payments from the Housing Revenue Accounts, but there is no wider policy for all other complaints.  Consideration was being given as to whether a policy should be put in place.  It was noted that the Local Government Ombudsman may instruct the Council to make compensatory payments;

·         it was agreed that it was important that details contained in anonymous complaints be reviewed and assessed although it was noted that few were received;

·         there was a public duty to report complaints even though there was no statutory duty to report to any of the committees regarding the Council’s performance;

·         it was noted that vexatious complainants should also be identified in the complaints process and dealt with under the relevant procedure;

·         it was noted that it was National Customer Service week from 4 October and Councillors were encouraged to meet with the Customer Service team next week to understand the role that they undertake;

·         that ELT should consider whether complaints received in respect of services that are not supplied, such as planning pre-applications, should be recorded as complaints;

·         it was noted that information relating to payments made to staff in employment cases would be provided to the Committee as requested by Councillor Flower;

·         complaint benchmarking between difference councils was difficult as each organisation recorded complaints differently and there was no County-wide approach to assist with this;

·         the Temporary Chief Planning Officer made the Committee aware that he was very focused on the level of complaints in the Planning Team and was keen to fully restore the pre-application process.

R E S O L V E D – that the Committee note and accept the report.