Agenda item

A report of the Director of Legal and Governance Services was presented to provide the Audit Committee with details of the Annual Complaints Report covering the period from April 2023 to March 2024. 

 

The report set out an overview of the Council’s complaints process covering the following elements:

 

·        complaints statistics and trends

·        outcomes

·        how the Council continued to learn from complaints

·        how the Council had worked towards the goals set in the previous Annual Report and;

·        planned actions to further strengthen the management of complaints during 2024/2025.

 

The report also outlined the governance in place to ensure complaints were managed in line with good practice and the expectations of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSC0), including details from the annual review of Local Authority Complaints, published recently by the LGSCO.

 

The Council operated three distinct complaints procedures: corporate complaints, children’s social care complaints and adult social care complaints.  Some complaints and appeals were addressed through separate procedures, such as data protection breaches or refusal of planning permission.

 

As set out in the Council Plan 2024-2027, the Council was committed to improving resident satisfaction with its services and welcomed customer feedback to help the Corporate Complaints Team to identify areas of good practice and address issues for customers.  The volume of customer feedback in relation to services, the Council’s response to complaints and commitment to learning from them improved performance.

 

The report provided a summary of corporate and statutory complaints covering 1 April 2023 – 31 March 2024.

 

Appendix 1 to the submitted report set out the data for this period and included:

 

·        Overall volumes of complaints and outcomes.

·        The numbers that were escalated to the LGSCO.

·        The volumes and outcome of complaints by department.

·        The percentage of complaints that were responded to in time by each department.

·        Tees Valley local authority comparative performance in relation to complaints.

 

While there had been a significant increase in the total number of complaints received by the Council in 2023/24, there was a much less marked corresponding increase in the percentage upheld after initial investigation. This rose from 50.5% (2022/2023) to 55.3% (2023/2024).  Most cases were upheld due to services failing to respond in time.

 

The outcome of complaints investigated by the LGSCO and the lessons the Council has learned from them was set out in paragraphs 4.33 to 4.40 of the submitted report.

 

From the period April 2023 to March 2024, 109 compliments were received by  the Central Complaints team, which was a significant increase on the 46 recorded for the two-year period 2021-2023 as reported in last year’s report.

The main trends in compliments related to:

 

• 40 compliments thanking Environmental staff in relation to grass cutting, street cleaning, bin collection and speed of responses to service issues.

• 18 compliments on the work of the Corporate or ‘Other’ service including outdoor events held in Albert Park and the friendliness of staff.
• 16 compliments thanking the Children and Education teams for supporting families during difficult times.
• 12 compliments across Adult Social Care mainly thanking individual workers for their support and hard work.

 

There had been a slight increase in the number of complaints in relation to Children’s Services from 157 (2022/23) and to 167 (2023/24).   Whilst the volume had increased, the percentage upheld locally had continued to decline year on year for the previously reported three years, rising slightly in the latest year.  This was a reflection of improvements in practice that had been delivered by the Children’s Services improvement journey.

 

Adults statutory complaints numbers remained low in comparison to Children’s at 31 in 2022/23 and reducing to 29 in 2023/24.  There was also a positive direction of travel in the percentage of upheld and partially upheld complaints, which decreased from 51.6% in 2022/23 to 48.3% in 2023/24. Of those upheld only 17% or 5 complaints were fully upheld. The remaining 31% or 9 complaints were only partially upheld. The main reason for the partially upheld complaints was due to the service having failed to complete investigations within the required timescales.

 

As in last year’s report, a continuing theme arising from complaints was the redesign of services, adopting new ways of working with the public, and increasing the use of remote engagement methods.

 

Appendix 1 to the submitted report also set out a breakdown of complaints by category. The categories were set by the LGSCO and gave a deeper indication of the types of complaints the Council received.   In both years, the highest number of complaints by volume related to Environment and Regulation services, which included Highways, Benefits and Tax, Corporate and other complaints.

 

In relation to timeliness of complaints handling, whilst overall compliance had increased year on year, performance across the Council was variable.  Whilst over 92% of complaints in relation to Benefits and Tax were responded to in time, the figure dropped to 37.5% for Education and Children’s complaints in 2023/2024.  

 

Some complainants remain dissatisfied after exhausting local complaints procedures and escalated their cases to the LGSCO to seek independent investigation.  During 2023/24, the Council had no judgements made against it by the LGSCO which required payment to be made to the complainants.

 

The Council continued to maintain a log to ensure lessons were learned from any investigations, whether the complaint was upheld or not, as well as LGSCO investigations.  Learning was is shared across the organisation where wider lessons could be learned from an issue.

 

The Council was exploring options to improve the speed of complaints management by looking at options to increase automation to reduce the ongoing impact of reduced staffing available to manage the complaints process.   During 2024/2025 the Council would also implement a delayed action from 2023 to ask complainants to complete a satisfaction questionnaire once their case was resolved, to identify further opportunity to improve practice.

 

Further information was requested on the timeline for investment in the fleet of vehicles used for bulky waste collection.

 

In response to service areas where there were high volumes of complaints, Departmental Management Teams were considering ways in which the speed of responses could be improved and ensuring that requests were recorded correctly.  An additional triage team had been established in the Environment Directorate to assist with responding to completes more quickly.

 

In respect of  Children’s Services there had been a significant staff turnover which had resulted in some delays responding to complaints.  The Team Managers reported to their Departmental Management Team on a monthly basis to manage performance. 

 

In respect of compliments, Members agreed that it was important recognise the increase in the number of compliments received and acknowledged that this demonstrated that services were improving.  A Member also highlighted that whenever major changes to Council services were introduced there would naturally be complaints. 

 

Finally, a request was made for the numbers of upheld and partially upheld complaints to be separated.  It was confirmed that this information would be provided in future reports.

 

AGREED as follows that:

 

1. the complaints statistics and trends, the outcomes and lessons learned from these, and planned actions to further strengthen the management of complaints over the next 12 months were noted by the Audit Committee.
2. Details of the timeline for investment in the fleet of vehicles used for bulky waste collection would be provided.