Issue - meetings

Purpose of Report

1.    To present an annual complaints report including details from the Annual Review of Local Authority Complaints issued by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) and the decisions of the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS).

2.    To report on the overall number of complaints received by the Council on a Directorate basis for the full year 2023-2024, including performance against target response times and the percentage of complaints which were upheld

Decision

That the content of the annual complaints report for 2023-2024 be received and noted.

Alternative Options Considered

None.

Reason for Decision

The Council’s complaints procedure included two levels in response to formal complaints, once the complaint had been considered and responded to by two separate officers the complainant was advised if they were not satisfied with the final response, to seek redress from the relevant Ombudsman service

Complaints relating to the landlord function of the Council, as a provider of social housing were escalated to the Housing Ombudsman Service, all other complaints, about any other service or aspect of Council business fell under the jurisdiction of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

In April 2024 the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code (The Code), became statutory for all social housing providers, we updated our policy to ensure that we complied with The Code and, as it represented best practice in dealing with customer complaints, we adopted the principles of The Code as a corporate policy

The main changes to our complaint handling were in terms of reporting of our performance, learning lessons from complaints, and ensuring that customers found it easy to make a complaint.

The Code required that we complete an annual self-assessment against all of the provisions set out in The Code. The self-assessment required that we consider each element of The Code and certify ourselves as either “Complied” or “Not Complied” with each of 78 provisions. Our self-assessment was also considered by the Lincoln Tenant’s Panel prior to submission.

Our 2024 Corporate Complaints Policy and Guidance was compliant with many of the provisions but there were a small number of areas where we had to undertake work; at date of submission of the initial self-assessment (30 June 2024) only 5 of the provisions were self-assessed as non-compliant at the date of submission (30 June 2024) as detailed in paragraph 2.8 of the officer’s report. These were now almost complete in demonstrating full compliance with The Code. The self-assessment was available for inspection on the Council’s website and attached to this report as Appendix A.

Further detailed information was provided within the report on performance received by the Council on a Directorate basis for the full year 2023-2024 before the Complaint Handling Code came into force covering the following main areas:

·       Complaints – Annual Performance (April 2023 – March 2024)

·       Breakdown of Complaints

·       Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Annual Review Report

·       Housing Ombudsman Service Complaints

·       Complaint Trends

·       Learning from Complaints

·       Compliments