Agenda item

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee is asked to: -

1.    Note the information provided in the Annual Complaints Report.

2.    Consider whether it is satisfied with the performance of the Council in regard of complaints and that there is both corporate and political ownership of the process.

3.    Consider whether it is satisfied that the Council is effectively using complaints received to inform service improvement.

4.    Consider whether the data provided highlights any areas of concern that should be consider for further investigation by Scrutiny.

The Committee considered the Annual Complaints Report which provided analysis of the complaint received by the Council. It was highlighted that due to a combination of factors, including the pandemic and the financial challenges of the Council, the report was delayed last year and as a result two years’ worth of information had been provided.

During the introduction to the report the importance of the organisation using complaints to identify areas for improvement and understand the concerns of residents was highlighted. It was also highlighted that as part of the reorganisation of the Council, the Complaints Team and other resident access services had been brought together under the Chief Digital Officer. One of the key drivers for this was to better harness user feedback in driving service redesign and culture change across the organisation. An explanation was also provided for the Committee on what actually constituted a complaint being made, rather than a more general enquiry.

Following the introduction, the Committee was given the opportunity to ask questions about the information provided. The first question concerned the information provided on the Council’s website about the complaints process and whether this needed to be reviewed. It was confirmed that the web page was being reviewed to make the difference between a service request and complaint clear for the public.

It was noted that the public may contact specific services directly to make a complaint and as such it was questioned whether these were being reliably recorded. It was advised that the standard of complaint recording varied from service to service, with some being very stringent in their reporting. Others were less so, but this could be for a variety of reasons, including the volume of contacts and whether an issue was resolved at the first point of contact.

It was highlighted that the Complaints team always tried to convey to other services that complaints should not be viewed as purely negative, instead they should be used to inform service improvement. It was an ongoing process to educate services on what a good complaints handling process looked like.

In response to a question about the reasons for changing the complaints handling software used by the Council, it was advised that the license cost for the previous system had been expensive and did not deliver the functionality expected. The new cost-effective solution was a low code system that could be maintained in-house. It was confirmed that although other local authorities used a range of software solutions, the new system chosen by the Council was used by others.

Given the significant issues reported within the Housing Service earlier in the year, it was questioned how the Committee could be reassured that there was an adequate system in place to raise a ‘red flag’ if a lot of complaints were received on a specific problem. It was advised that a lot of lessons had been learnt in the Housing Service, with a new system in place to log complaints. There was still work to do on the repairs systems, but work was ongoing to introduce a standardised approach which interacted with other Council systems. At present, the Council did not have a single overarching system that could analysis and flag patterns of complaint, but this would be targeted as part of the refreshed Digital Strategy.

To address the specific issues with housing repairs, options being considered included the possibility of the Axis Repairs team co-locating with their counterparts at the Council and having a more robust system for following up with customers once repairs had been completed. Weekly meetings had been set up to monitor the Axis contract using data controlled by the Council, to ensure it was being delivered as expected.

It was confirmed that complaints were reviewed corporately on a monthly basis, allowing the leadership team to identify areas of concern. As the use of information improved it would allow specific issues to be pin pointed and addressed before they could develop into a larger problem. The Complaints team worked with external providers, such as Axis, to ensure the correct information was provided. It was also confirmed that the Complaints team met with the leadership team of each directorate on a monthly basis to ensure there was a regular review on the use of complaints, in order to drive improvement.

In response to a question about whether individual Cabinet Members had sufficient oversight of the complaints received for their specific areas of responsibility, it was advised that at this stage reassurance could not be given that this was definitely happening. However, with new reporting systems being installed, it was hoped that by the time of the next annual report, complaints would be routinely reviewed by all Cabinet Members.

It was confirmed that each service had a single point of contact for complaints, which enabled the Complaints team to develop a consistent approach to complaint handling. In additional, information was provided on the Council’s intranet to instruct staff on the complaints process.

At the conclusion of the questioning section of this item the Chair thanked the officers involved for their engagement with the Committee, both at the meeting and in the lead up, which had helped to provide reassurance that the process for handling complaints at the Council was heading in the right direction.

Conclusions

Following its discussion of the Annual Complaints Report, the Scrutiny & Overview Committee reached the following conclusions: -

1.    The openness of the Complaints team to engage with the Scrutiny & Overview Committee, along with the quality of the report provided, was commended.

2.    It was accepted that the Council was in the process of putting a much more robust system in place for handling and monitoring complaints, but issues such as the need to replace the telephony system and the need to change the complaint handling system twice in a short period of time had hampered progress.

3.    Although some services had a positive attitude towards complaints, the Committee remained unconvinced that the culture of the Council had changed sufficiently to move towards a more open system of using complaints to drive service improvement.

4.    The Committee would request that future reports evidence how the culture of the Council has changed towards complaints and provide examples of where complaints data has been used to influence service improvement.

5.    It was accepted that due to changes in the complaints reporting system, a process for Cabinet Members to routinely monitor the complaints received in their areas of responsibility had not been put in place. However, if this was not in place and evidenced when the Committee next considered the Annual Complaints Report, it would be a cause for significant concern.