Agenda item

The Committee is provided with a copy of the Annual Complaints Report for 2018-19 for their information and is asked to consider whether they wish to make any recommendations based on the content of the report.

The Committee received a report which set out data on both the Corporate and Statutory complaints received by the Council in 2018 – 2019. During the introduction to the report the following points were noted:-

·         The Council operate three separate complaint processes. One for corporate complaints and two others for Children and Adult Services respectively. In all three instances residents have the right to escalate their complaint to the ombudsman.

·         Included within the report was complaints data covering the last five years, although due to changes within teams over this period it was difficult to draw a consistent comparison.

·         The report also included benchmarking data with other authorities, but this information had not been available for statutory complaints (those relating to Children or Adult Services).

·         There had been a rise in the number of corporate complaints received, which could be linked to the new bin role out in autumn 2018. There had also been rise in the number of social care complaints, but a decrease in the number upheld.

·         The response times for Children Service complaints had decreased following complaint handling training for managers. The current system did not take account of the often complex nature of complaints received within the service, which meant that response times could be negatively impacted.

The Committee was given the opportunity to asked questions on the content of the report. The first question related to the submission of complaints and whether they had to be submitted online. It was confirmed that complaints were received in a variety of formats including both verbally and in writing. As such it was requested that the options open to the public in submitting complaints be made clearer on the Council’s website.

In response to a question about how complaints data was analysed, it was advised that the Complaints team regularly met with other teams to run through any trends in the complaints received for their respective area and to help with developing corresponding actions to address these trends.

Environmental complaints were currently higher than expected, but there were some teams that traditionally had a higher level of complaints such as environment, repairs, council tax and benefits. In general the number of complaints received tended to increase which was similar to other authorities.

It was confirmed that the Complaints team would share complaints data with CDS to help inform areas where there may be issues.

It was noted that the Children Service was starting to see a positive change, with the team taking a greater ownership of complaints. As such it was questioned whether this was similarly the case elsewhere in the Council.  It was advised that complaints handling had improved, but there was still further work to do around visible action plans showing improvements, in relation to complaint themes.

It was suggested that the level of complaints received may not be representative of the actual number of people wanting to complain. In response it was advised that it was the Council’s responsibility to ensure that the mechanism for complaining was easy. For instance work was currently being progressed on making it easier for children to complain.  There was also a need to look at the reasons for complaints and ensure that these were being addressed.

At the conclusion of the item the Chair thanked the officers for their attendance at the meeting and noted that it would be interesting to find out if the issues raised by the Committee had been addressed when the Annual Complaints report was next reviewed in 12 months.

Conclusions

Following discussion of the report, the Committee reached the following conclusions:-

1.    It was recognised that the team were starting to get a grip on the complaints process.

2.    It was agreed that it would be valuable for the Health and Social Care Sub-Committee to look at the Adults complaints process in further detail during the forthcoming year.

3.    That it would be useful for the Committee to be made aware of any increase in the number of complaints relating to a specific area during the year.

4.    That information relating to complaints with specific Portfolios should be included as part of the written report presented by the Cabinet Member to the Committee for their Question Time item.

Recommendations

The Committee RESOLVED to recommend to the Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources that a mechanism should be put in place to provide the Scrutiny Members with a regular updates on the Council’s Complaints Performance.

The Committee RESOLVED to recommend to all Cabinet Members that information relating to complaints within their Portfolio should be included within each Cabinet Member’s Question Time report.