Agenda item

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer: kate.mitchelmore@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

The Committee noted that this was the first report on compliments and complaints since the establishment of the new Council on 1 April 2020. This report would provide a baseline which could be used for monitoring going forward and was assisted by a centralised complaints system. The Feedback, Compliments and Complaints Policy was launched on 1 April 2020.

The Service Director for Policy and Communications made the following points:-

·         There were Stage 1 complaints (initially dealt with by the Service area with co-ordination through the Complaints Team) and Stage 2 complaints (independent officers who reviewed complaints where there continued to be dissatisfaction ). In addition there were statutory complaints for Children’s Services and Adult Services. If the resident was still not happy they had the right to refer the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman.

·         The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman had now confirmed that the annual review letter for 2020/21 would be issued to authorities in July.

·         1029 compliments have been received by the new Council in this reporting year.

·         2099 stage 1 complaints have been received during this year which compared to 2064 received during 2019/20 by the former five councils.

·         The main areas for complaints were Waste and Recycling South, Council Tax, Benefits, Planning and SEND reflecting problems with some of the services. The report provided information on how the Complaints and Information Team and the Service areas were addressing these areas to help service improvement.

·         The report put these complaints in perspective on the number of complaints received against the number of services the Council provided.

·         The timeframe for responding to a stage 1 complaint was 20 working days. This timeframe was achieved for 55% of cases. Delays in providing stage 1 responses increased in the second and third quarter of the year mainly due to the increase in the number of complaints received together with pressures related to the pandemic. Work was being carried out with services to help reduce the timescales.

·         Of the 2,000 complaints - 172 Stage 2 complaints were considered in total and this represented an escalation rate of 8.2% from stage 1 complaints and roughly half of those were not upheld when they were reviewed independently. .

• In terms of statutory complaints for adult social care (one stage process that encouraged local resolution) there were 44 complaints of which 25 were fully or partially upheld.
• The Children’s Statutory Complaints process had 3 stages. Stage 1 was the local resolution stage and involved the service responding in writing to the complaint. Stage 2 was an independent investigation of the complaint which was carried out externally. The resulting report fed into the formal response which was completed by the relevant Service Director. Stage 3 was an independent review panel. There were 28 cases received at stage 1 of the process, 7 of which escalated to a stage 2 and in turn 1 escalated to a stage 3.
• The Complaints and Information Team would continue to work with services to provide improvement and a Learning Form had now been introduced which had been piloted in Children’s Services and in addition training was being provided to staff to help them respond to complaints as clearly and as quickly as possible.
• Reference was made to the report appendices which provided some visual information on how complaints were responded to.
• The Committee would receive an annual report on this area which would provide benchmarking as the Council moved forward.

During discussion the following points were made:-

·         A Member queried whether complaints to Members were included in the report and also commented that it would be helpful to be given feedback on complaints in their area so that they were aware if the issue had been resolved. The Member also commented that training was important as often the first person to deal with the complaint could placate residents with a robust response in the first instance. The Head of Information Management reported that complaints to Members were included in the numbers but had not been separated out in the report. She would look at the best way of providing information on complaint resolution for Local Members. With the five legacy councils there were discrepancies with the ways each Council dealt with complainants and their response times. A piece of work was being undertaken on the cross cutting customer experience to embed training for officers not just when a customer complained but any customer interaction.

·         Reference was made to a complaint being an indicator of customer dissatisfaction. In terms of learning a question was asked about whether  there were service reviews over clustered complaints and how this was logged in terms of activity and subsequent intervention. In addition how many complaints were directed to Service Directors for resolution. The Head of Information Management reported that the Council was getting a new case management system and that would be crucial in how the Council tracked its learning and they also worked with the Business Improvement Team to ensure it was followed through with services. In terms of the complaints process Service Directors were included and it was important that councillors were also kept up to date and the reason why certain decisions had been made.

·         It was important to separate out the reason for dissatisfaction to see if it was directly related to the pandemic as opposed to a structural problem with the service area. The Head of Information Management reported that in the first lockdown the number of complaints went down and compliments went up, including for the waste services. However, when the first lockdown ended residents became more concerned about local services. The difficulty of becoming a new unitary council during the start of the pandemic could not be underestimated and this did impact on service delivery. A number of service reviews had been undertaken across the new authority where strengths and weaknesses had been identified and action taken on improvement. The Service Director added that if there were any structural problems that had been masked by the pandemic this would become apparent in the months ahead.

·         Some complaints had related to a change in process from the legacy Council to the new Council where it would have been helpful for Members to have been provided with clearer information e.g. planning. Another issue related to residents not being able to speak to officers directly and because of this ended up contacting their local member, which could have helped them not becoming formal complaints. In terms of the change in processes the Service Director reported that he could look into this area and provide further information. The Council would aim to alert Members and residents to any changes that impacted on them. With phone calls there was a cross cutting piece of work being carried out on the customer experience and work was being carried out on responding to phone calls. The pandemic did have a significant impact on the transition to the new Authority. If Members were still experiencing problems in this area they should contact the Service Director for Customer Services.

·         A question was asked about response times (20 days) which had not been achieved for 45% of the cases but whether this had improved after the impact of the first lockdown. The Head of Information Management reported that the Council were still struggling with response times which was often due to the resident entering the Council through the wrong process and should be directed to service delivery e.g. waste services. The Complaint and Information Team was reliant on the service area to address the issue. The Service Review should help this and the embedding of a new culture. The Council was very serious about customer engagement. They were working closely with the Service and Business Improvement Teams. Big improvements had also been made to improving responses to Freedom of Information requests. Residents were made aware if there was going to be a delayed response. Response times were also being carefully monitored by the Corporate Directors. In terms of a target there was a workplan which had been drawn up with the Business Improvement Team, of 65%. The 20 days could be extended with complex issues and it was important to keep the resident updated.

·         A Member stated that whilst it was helpful to consolidate information it was also important to differentiate on different types of service. For example in the South waste services were being delivered through a new contractor and in the North, in-house staff were used. Operationally some services were delivered as per their legacy districts and this information was useful to local members. The Head of Information Management reported that this would be difficult with the new case management system across the Board although information could be provided on waste services. This would be helpful information for service improvement and this was being addressed.

·         Local Members were not currently provided with information on complaint resolution which was often due to data protection issues but where a resident had engaged directly with a local member they should be copied into the response. High level information could be provided where the resident had not given permission for information to be shared. The Member commented that often the resident would expect the local member to be aware of their concerns. The Head of Information Management reported that this could be pursued with the Information Commissioner as the Council could update their privacy notices that information on complaint handling could be shared with local members. Not every resident would be happy to share their complaint information.

·         Complaints were an opportunity for corporate improvement but also could be related to high customer expectation. The Service Director commented that more could be done so that officers viewed complaints as positive and a clear indication on how they could improve services. The Corporate Management Team took this very seriously and wanted to embed any learning from complaints into service improvement. Policy changes were part of how local government operated which could easily result in a complaint being made and was challenging to avoid.

·         A question was asked on how much time was wasted with vexatious complaints. The Service Director Policy and Communications reported that sometimes it was difficult to differentiate with a complaint and a service request. It was important to triage information to ensure it was genuine. He also commented that half of the complaints were given the same response second time round as the Council was happy with the way they had responded the first time. There were stages in the process to weed out vexatious complaints as early as possible.

The Chairman reported that this was an evolving process in terms of settling into the new council and the post pandemic period and commented that it would be useful to revisit this area before next year to get an update on those issues that had been raised.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.