Agenda item

To consider a report by the Statutory and Corporate Complaints Officer (copy enclosed) which seeks the Committee to fulfil its role in relation to scrutinising the Council’s performance in dealing and learning from complaints.

11:15pm – 11:45pm

The Lead Member for Developing Community Infrastructure introduced the Statutory and Corporate Complaints Officer’s report (previously circulated) on Services’ compliance and performance with the corporate customer complaints policy during quarter 4 of the 2017/18 reporting year.  During his introduction he informed members that the number of complaints received along with the number of compliments and suggestions received were all higher than the previous quarter.  Nevertheless, only one complaint had not been dealt with within the set time, this complaint related to the Education Service.  Due to the pressures it was under because of personnel and resources being allocated towards the work involved with the Estyn inspection at the time, the Service had not been able to gather all the views it needed to respond to the complaint in time.  Nevertheless the Council had still attained a performance rate of 99% in dealing with complaints.  During quarter 4 2017/18 customer feedback had resulted in a learning point for the Single Point of Access (SPoA) Service, which would result in a better service for all in due course.  For the 2017/18 year in its entirety the Council’s performance in dealing with complaints within the specified time was in the region of 99%.

In response to members’ questions the Lead Member, Principal Manager (Support Services) – Community Support Services, and the Statutory and Corporate Complaints Officer:

·         advised that having a dedicated officer dealing with statutory and corporate complaints had been crucial in securing an improvement in the Council’s performance in dealing with complaints.  He was able to focus on responding and handling the complaints and securing that they were dealt with within the designated target dates.  There was now a better system in place to deal with complaints and processes relating to dealing with complaints had been tightened;

·         confirmed that there had been an increase in recent months in the number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests received.  However, as a separate officer dealt with FOI requests it did not adversely impact on the Authority’s performance in dealing with complaints;

·         advised that complaints received in relation to individual schools were dealt with by the schools concerned.  Complaints relating to education or education related policies were dealt with centrally by the Council;

·         confirmed that the nature of the complaints received were analysed with a view to identifying any emerging trends and improvements to services i.e. trends identified as part of the social services complaints process would be reported within the Director of Social Services’ Annual Report along with proposed improvements to address any shortcomings or failings;

·         advised that all complaints received were analysed on a quantitative and qualitative basis; and

·         informed the Committee that it was pleasing to report that Highways and Environmental Services had received a high volume of compliments following their efforts clearing snow and keeping roads open etc. during the recent periods of adverse weather conditions.

Committee members congratulated all services on their excellent performance in responding and dealing with complaints and

Resolved: - subject to the above observations to recommend that in future

(i)           Quarter 1 and Quarter 3 ‘Your Voice’ performance reports be presented to the Committee as ‘Information Reports’; and

(ii)          Quarter 2 and 4 ‘Your Voice’ performance reports be formally presented to the Committee at a meeting, unless any concerns in relation to performance in complying with the complaints procedures or the types of complaints received necessitates the presentation of a report to the Committee to highlight concerns.