Agenda item

John Scott, Audit Manager, on behalf of Joanne Crookes, Customer Services Manager:

a.    presented the annual complaints report which included reference to the Annual Review of Local Authority Complaints issued by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO), and details of the decisions of the Housing Ombudsman

b.    reported also on the overall number of complaints received by the Council including response times and percentage of complaints upheld on a directorate basis for the full year 2018-2019

c.    highlighted the background to the council’s complaints procedure at paragraph 2 of the report

d.    advised that there was no published time target for the handling of complaints, however, resolution times were recorded and reported to Departmental Management Teams (DMT’s) and staff were encouraged to seek solutions at the first point of contact or otherwise resolve the issue at the earliest opportunity

e.    reported that the ongoing trend over the past four years of a reduction in the number of complaints received had continued again last year, as detailed at paragraph 3.3 of the report

f.     stated that there had been a slight increase in the amount of time taken for officers to respond to complaints at 7.6 days over all four directorates

g.    detailed further the breakdown of directorate complaints at paragraph 4 of the report

h.    highlighted that in 2018/19 the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) considered 11 newcomplaints and made decisions on 10 complaints about City of Lincoln Services; the number of complaints to the Ombudsman were also decreasing with a steady reduction from a peak in 2015-16 of 27 complaints

i.     outlined the detail of the one complaint upheld as detailed at paragraph 6.1 of the report

j.     reported that three Housing Ombudsman Service complaints had been investigated during this period, the same number as in the previous year, of these one found no evidence of maladministration in decision making nonetheless a recommendation for compensation was made as detailed at paragraph 7.3 of the report, and the remaining two had not been upheld

11. highlighted the trend in complaints as detailed at paragraph 8 of the report

12. highlighted the number of compliments received from members of the public acknowledging professionalism of staff across all service areas

13. invited members' questions and comments.

Members of Audit Committee discussed the content of the report in further detail.

Members asked whether average response times quoted within the report referred to acknowledgement of the complaint or providing an answer.

John Scott, Audit Manager, advised that average time to deal with a complaint included both its acknowledgement and providing the relevant response.

Members questioned the statement within the report that Major Developments did not receive a large number of complaints which was surprising.

Jaclyn Gibson, Chief Finance Officer, explained the reason for this being that the complaints were likely to come through the service areas when the developments were handed over e.g. any complaints regarding the bus station would come through community services.

Members congratulated the Customer Services Manager on the team’s achievements in securing a reduction in the number of complaints yet again this year.

RESOLVED that the content of the 2018-2019 complaints report be noted.