Agenda item

To consider a report by the Head of Customers and Education Support (copy enclosed) providing the Committee with an overview of complaints and compliments received by Denbighshire County Council during 2011/2012 and how the Council performed in terms of handling feedback.

10.15am – 10.40am

 

 

10.40am – 10.55am   Break

 

The Head of Customers and Education Support (H:CES) presented a report (previously circulated) to provide members with an overview of complaints and compliments received by Denbighshire County Council under the council’s feedback policy “Your Voice” during the period 1^st April 2011 to 31^st March, 2012.

 

The H:CES reported that a re-launch of the complaint procedure “Your Voice” would take place.  The process would have three elements:-

 

Ø      Dealing with complaints on time

Ø      Sharing information when compliments were received

Ø      How to gather feedback.

 

A quarterly report would be taken to the Performance Scrutiny Committee to enable any issues to be dealt with immediately rather than delaying until the year end.  A monthly report would also be presented to SLT.

 

The Corporate target for dealing with complaints on time was 95% but currently this had been running at 88%.  Work was taking place with services to improve the complaint response time and encourage services to meet their targets.

 

The highest proportion of complaints came in at stage 1, although a number go through to the next stages.  There was a need to understand where the escalations came from and if there had been an underlying issue as to why the service had not dealt with the complaint in an effective and timely manner.

 

The Ombudsman had only investigated two complaints, but an issue the report did reveal was that 17 out of 38 complaints were sent on to the Ombudsman too early.  The Ombudsman then referred them back to the Council.

 

The Ombudsman focused on customers and had issued guidance to be adopted by each Local Authority.  This would lead to stage 3 complaints being reduced and a majority would then become stage 2 complaints.

 

The Council were working to be an open and transparent authority.  Complaints were to be encouraged and responses dealt with effectively.  Vexatious complaints were to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

 

There was a corporate system in place on which detailed information had to be entered.  There was a vexatious section within the system which was to be reviewed to ensure the system would be more robust.

 

It was recommended that percentage trends over time and annual historic data would be useful information for future meetings.

 

Over time customer services capacity would grow.  It was agreed there were currently insufficient numbers of staff at certain times of the day.  Cash office staff numbers were to be reduced as automated payment machines were to be put in place.  This would provide additional resources for the call centre.   A pilot scheme had been running within the Housing section and would also take place in Highways in the future.

 

Services had been asked to identify trends throughout their own departments.  There were two corporate indicators but the council were now looking at service standard indicators as follows:-

1.      how complaints were dealt with and

2.      how trends were identified.

 

Monitoring complaints had been an issue in the past but services were currently being checked to ascertain if they were analysing trends.   The information would be passed through the service challenge process and fully change the service as a consequence.

 

There was a standing item within the Standards Committee Agenda – “Code of Conduct Complaints”.

 

The Ombudsman’s Annual Report also had a break down of Member code of conduct issues.

 

RESOLVED that:-

Ø      the Committee note the suggestions regarding improvement of the Council’s performance in handling complaints, and

Ø      percentage trends and annual historic data to be included in the future reports.

 

 

At this juncture (10.50 a.m.) there was a refreshment break

 

Meeting reconvened at 11.00 a.m.