Agenda item

Emily Holmes, Assistant Director, Transformation and Strategic Development, on behalf of Jo Crookes, Customer Services Manager:

a.    presented 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)

b.    reported 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

c.     explained that 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

d.    highlighted that 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

e.    reported that 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

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

g.    detailed a small number of areas where we had to undertake work; at date of submission of the initial self-assessment 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

h.    provided further detailed information 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

i.      invited comments and questions from Members on the content of the report

Members discussed the report findings in further detail, commented and asked questions, receiving relevant responses from officers as follows:

Comment: It was encouraging to see that although as a social landlord we would receive more complaints, by asking tenants if they wished to make a complaint, we would be able to learn from any errors and stop so many complaints reoccurring.

Response: Yes. Any patterns of recurring issues could be ‘nipped in the bud’ sooner and fed into the relevant teams to be rectified.

Comment: This was a valuable way to find out how to do things better and to learn from any mistakes going forward.

Response: The Ombudsman welcomed more complaints as it made us more approachable and open to service improvements.

Comment: It would be difficult for some customers who were not ‘internet savvy’ to complain in some areas.

RESOLVED that the content of the complaints report for 2023-2024 be noted prior to referral to Executive for consideration.