Agenda item

To consider a report by the Corporate Complaints Officer, which provides an overview of compliments, suggestions and complaints received by Denbighshire under the Council’s customer feedback policy ‘Your Voice’ during Q3 2015/16, had been circulated previously.

                                                                                       10.20 a.m. – 10.55 a.m.

A copy of a report by the Corporate Complaints Officer (CCO), which provided an overview of compliments, suggestions and complaints received by Denbighshire County Council under the council’s customer feedback policy ‘Your Voice’ during Q3 2015/16, had been circulated with the agenda.

The Lead Member for Customers and Libraries introduced the report on the Council’s performance in dealing with customer feedback during the third quarter of the 2015/16 year.  He advised that the number of complaints during the third quarter were down in comparison to quarter 2, whilst the number of compliments had increased.  Over the last four years there had been a downward trend in the number of complaints received.  Whilst the way in which complaints were now recorded may partly account for this downward trend, fewer actual complaints had also been received. 

The Principal Manager:  Business Support advised that during the last four years the average number of complaints per quarter had been between 80 and 150.  He advised that it would be worth undertaking some additional analysis if complaints in any quarter rose above 150, as it may indicate an underlying problem which required addressing.

The Council had set itself an extremely ambitious target of dealing with 95% of complaints within 10 working days of their receipt, this target was proving to be a challenging one to meet, but officers felt that this was appropriate in order to raise standards and expectations.  He advised that, in line with the Committee’s request, paragraph 4.4 of the report included information about the process of dealing with complaints in respect of commissioned services. 

It was anticipated that future quarterly performance reports would details complaints made in respect of commissioned services separately.  Responding to Members’ questions the Lead Member and officers advised that:-

·                     If an individual challenged the validity of a fixed penalty notice (FPN) or appealed against its issue that would not be counted as a complaint;

·                     Comparing the number of complaints and compliments received against the numbers recorded by other local authorities had limited value, as each local authority had different recording methods, it was far better to examine best practice in dealing with complaints and how to use them to improve service delivery in future;

·                     Only a very small minority of complaints were deemed to be vexatious complaints.  However, due to their complex nature and the seniority of individuals sometimes cited in these complaints some complaints did take longer to investigate and often take up significant resources to bring to a conclusion; and

·                     The number of complaints listed in the report against each service area varied due to the size and nature of each service i.e. Highways and Environmental Services was one very large public facing service, which due to its size and the types of services it provided was expected to receive one of the highest number of complaints in comparison to other services which had a more internal focus.

Following detailed discussion it was:-

RESOLVED – that subject to the above observations to receive the report on the Council’s performance during Quarter 3 of 2015/16 in dealing with complaints and compliments in accordance with its ‘Your Voice’ Complaints Procedure.