Agenda item

Annual Complaints and Compliments Report 2020/21

To consider the report.

Minutes:

The Chairman invited Nikki Craig (Head of HR, Corporate Projects and IT) to begin discussing the report. A local authority had a statutory obligation to report on complaints relating to its adults and children services, but not those relating to other corporate services. However, the RBWM’s annual report covered all compliments and complaints in terms of the complaints process.

 

Corporate complaints had a 2-stage process.

·     A review of the complaint would be undertaken and would ideally be responded to in 10 days or ask for an extension could be asked for, if required

·     Stage 2 gave a time frame of 20 days, where a director for that service would carry out a review of the stage 1 complaint

 

There were opportunities there to raise this further with local government and social care ombudsman.

 

The Chairman invited Nikki Craig (Head of HR, Corporate Projects and IT) to begin discussing the report. A local authority had a statutory obligation to report on complaints relating to its adults and children services, but not those relating to other corporate services. However, the RBWM’s annual report covered all compliments and complaints in terms of the complaints process.

 

Corporate complaints had a 2-stage process.

·     A review of the complaint would be undertaken and would ideally be responded to in 10 days or ask for an extension could be asked for, if required

·     Stage 2 gave a time frame of 20 days, where a director for that service would carry out a review of the stage 1 complaint

 

There were opportunities there to raise this further with local government and social care ombudsman.

 

In 2020/21 there were:

·     2,268 contacts made to the compliments and complaints team.

·     415 were progressed and dealt with as formal complaints.

·     Just over 350 of these complaints related to services, which were not adults or children.

·     There were 766 compliments made to the team, compared to 355 the previous year.

·     There were 15 compliments for housing, 14 for planning and 8 for highways.

 

The Chairman reiterated the focus being only on Highways, Planning, Housing and Transport in this report.

 

Councillor Taylor asked Nikki Craig, what was officially classed as a complaint.

 

Nikki Craig responded by stating that of the 2,268 contacts, some were simply called service requests, such as a resident’s bin not being emptied. This would then be filtered through the appropriate channel leaving the figure of 415 formal complaints.

 

Councillor Taylor expressed her acknowledgment of the increase seen in compliments and asked if the impact of the pandemic had impacted this? If it had, could this be adopted for the future, to continue this increase in compliments.

 

Nikki Craig said that the pandemic had changed how some things have operated, such as increasing communication electronically with residents.

 

Councillor Taylor also asked how long the local government and social care ombudsman (LGSCO) paused their service during the lockdown?

 

Nikki Craig said it was back up before the 2nd lockdown and that the LGSCO had taken the decision to pause their investigation of complaints during the first lockdown so that local authorities could concentrate their efforts on covid response and resident safety being prioritised.

 

Councillor Haseler put on record his acknowledgement of the increase in compliments. He asked if the panel could see numbers of individual cases of service requests such as the number of missed bins or hedgerows? This would give the panel an indication as to what issues specifically were impacting residents.

 

Nikki Craig agreed she would ask the team responsible for the Report IT function and if possible, provide a response offline.

 

Councillor Singh asked if there was a breakdown in the report as to how residents went about registering a complaint.

 

Nikki Craig said this was not present in the report, however the website was the most used function to log a complaint. Occasionally there were emails, or less frequently phone calls or letters. Nikki Craig agreed to see if the specific detail was held so that it could be shared offline.

 

Councillor Singh welcomed this and expressed his concern for his ward and the digital exclusion that could be present, restricting his resident’s ability to register a complaint.

 

Nikki Craig replied by saying that upon phoning the council, a member of the customer services team would be able to assist the resident by completing the online form for them and refer a member of the appropriate team to them a time that was convenient for them.

 

Councillor Singh asked if there were figures for how often this happened. Nikki Craig agreed to ask the service if it was possible to provide this information offline.

 

Councillor Shelim referred to page 40 of the report and asked for clarity on table 3.

 

Nikki Craig provided this clarity by explaining each value within the table mentioned.

 

Councillor Taylor asked if the function could exist for residents to use the library staff to log a complaint, in reference to Councillor Singh’s discussion of the digital exclusion some faced. Nikki Craig said that she would confirm this offline but was confident that the library staff would support this.

 

ACTIONS:

Nikki Craig to update panel on:

·     Statistics for Report IT requests if available.

·     Statistical breakdown of what forms of communication are used to register complaints if logged by the service.

·     How many complaints came directly from the customer service team, through referrals if held by the service.

·     Would the library staff assist residents with submitting a complaint?

 

 

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the Infrastructure Overview and Scrutiny Panel noted the report and:

i)               That the report was published on the Council’s website.

ii)           That the annual report continued to be produced and presented at Overview and Scrutiny panels

 

Supporting documents: