Issue - meetings

To consider a report by the Corporate Complaints Officer (copy attached) which presented an analysis of the feedback received via Denbighshire’s feedback policy `Your Voice` for Quarter 2 of 2012/13.

                                                                                                         10.45 a.m.

A copy of a report by the Corporate Complaints Officer had been circulated with the papers for the meeting.

The Customer Relationship Manager introduced the report which presented an analysis of the feedback received via Denbighshire County Council’s customer feedback policy ‘Your Voice’ for Quarter 2 of 2012/13. The Corporate Complaints Officer (CCO) summarised the report which identified the key areas detailed below:-

Highlights – The Councils response time to complaints within the ‘Your Voice’ timescales in Quarter 2 was down from 91% to 87% in the previous quarter and continued to be short of the corporate target of 95%.

Complaint response times - Although the overall performance of the Council had dropped there were a number of points to note. 

·        A number of complaints had been incorrectly allocated to services and reallocated under the heading of ‘Other’.  This had impacted on the overall performance figures as these complaints had been dealt with outside of target.

·        Housing Services had ‘stabilised’ their performance following the restructure.

·        Environmental Services continued to perform well despite having had the highest volume of complaints.  Their performance had not suffered significantly despite a 69% increase in the complaints received during the quarter. 

·        The complaint volumes for Highways had increased by 38% in the quarter.  However, performance had only slipped slightly. 

·        Stage 1 complaints were said to relate to failure to respond within the recognised timescales, with 87% of Stage 1 complaints having been responded to within an appropriately timeframe.

Improving performance - The corporate aim had been to respond to at least 95% of complaints within the stated timescales.  The main area of concern had been responding to Stage 1 complaints outside the 10 working day timescale.  A meeting with service complaints and performance officers had been held in November to further reinforce this aspect of performance and one aim would be to ascertain why complaints were not responded to within timescale.  The findings from the meeting would assist in formulating an action plan to improve this aspect of complaint handling with the results fed back to the Committee when the next report is presented in February.  A monthly report had been introduced in September for meetings of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) highlighting performance in regards responding to complaints.

In response to a question from Councillor A. Roberts, the (CCO) confirmed that all complaints received should be directed through the Customer Relationship Management system.

The Customer Relationship Manager responded to a question from Councillor M.Ll. Davies and provided an outline of how the timescales in respect of complaint response times had been set.  He confirmed that consideration was currently being afforded to adopting a two stage policy as advised by the Local Government Ombudsman.  In reply to concerns raised by Councillor D. Owens it was explained that, depending on the nature of the complaint, responses could be provided within shorter timescale.  In cases where timescales could not be adhered to customers would be informed accordingly.  

Following further discussion, it was:-

RESOLVED – that Performance Scrutiny Committee receives the report and notes the performance of services.