Agenda item

The Director of Finance submits a report, which provides an update on corporate non-statutory complaints in 2018/19.

The Director of Finance presented a report on Corporate Complaints in order to update the Committee on corporate non-statutory complaints in the 2018/19 municipal year and so that members could note the improvements and comment upon the actions from the lessons learned and planned future changes.

It was reported that complaints were now triaged in order to determine the route of the complaint and who needed to be involved.

It was noted that in 2018/19 the total number of complaints was 1,408 compared to 1,485 in 2017/18, a reduction of 5.2%.

Of these complaints 864 (38%) were triaged to the appropriate service to respond.

It had been determined that of the 544 complaints independently investigated, 18% of these were justified, 22% partially justified and 60% were not justified in that the authority was not found to be at fault.

The three most common categories of complaint were:

1.    Quality of service 196 (36%)

2.    Policy, procedure and legislation 162 (30%)

3.    Speed of service (15%)

The top 10 service areas that complaints have been received about, accounting for 90% of the total 544 complaints investigated were:

1.    Housing repairs.

2.    Local Taxation.

3.    Housing (other).

4.    Housing Options.

5.    Housing Benefits.

6.    Customer Services.

7.    Street Scene Enforcement.

8.    Sports and Leisure Centres.

9.    Planning Management.

10.Parks and Green Spaces.

Lessons learned from the report included:

·         Being proactive to tackle personal injustice

-Listening to customers, offering apologies, giving opportunities to appeal or review a case.

·         Recommendations for service improvements arising from complaint investigations

-A review of policies, change to practices, training staff, raising awareness of issues.

·         A Corporate Complaints Policy had been introduced to ensure the good practice outlined by the Local Government Ombudsman was met.

·         A procedure on how to manage vexatious complaints was introduced.

Actions were identified which would continue to make a difference to delivery without compromising the benefits of complaints.  These were:

·         To continue to raise awareness of the complaints prevention activity across all services/divisions.  As such a customer liaison was embedded into the triage procedure.

·         To review the approach to remedies.  The key principle was that the remedy should, as far as possible, put the complainant back in the position they would have been had the error not occurred.

·         Service improvement meetings would be ongoing.

·         The Service Improvement Manager would review the categorisation of complaints.

Councillor Rahman brought the attention of the Committee to point 2.8 of the report and enquired as to whether the true number of complaints could be higher due to the difficulty of navigating the online complaint submission journey.

It was reported that the service were mapping the journey that the customer goes through in order to try and develop a better process that the customer can follow.  It was also acknowledged that there were other avenues to report complaints such as by telephone, email or post.

Councillor Dr Moore reported that she had received many complaints from constituents about the phone system for making enquiries. It was also remarked that it was necessary to cater for some older people who did not use computers.

Councillor Dr Moore further commented that the Councillor enquiry system could be difficult, and it was often easier for them to call an officer.  She enquired as to how complaints were collated when Councillors were not part of the process.

Regarding the Councillor enquiry system, Councillors were encouraged to use it as it helped the service to compile data and information so that the nature of issues being faced could be understood.  As this would allow a similar triage system to be introduced so that issues could be addressed as early as possible.

Regarding customer contact it was reported that a new telephony system would be in place by May 2020 and that online use was encouraged so that phone lines were free for those who needed them most.

In response to a request from Councillor Dr Moore, it was confirmed that a report on how the new telephony system was working once it was in place could be submitted to the Committee.

Councillor Joshi referred to an incident helping a person at York House Customer Service Centre.  He remarked that delays had been very distressing, and although the situation was eventually resolved to a satisfactory level, the connecting time was longer than expected and that waiting time needed to be reduced.

It was reported that there were two priority telephone lines where the waiting time was around one minute, one for Adult and Children’s Social Care and one for housing repairs.  It was explained that the situation described by Councillor Joshi would have been Tier 2- Housing options, which was very busy, and whilst they tried to have a quick turn-around, the long and complex nature of these conversations made this difficult

Councillor Bajaj suggested having a complaints box outside Town Hall so that written complaints could be easily received.  The feasibility of this option would be considered.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the contents of the report be noted.

2.    That a report on the new telephony system be submitted in due course.