Agenda item

Report of Complaints and Customer Manager

5.1     The Committee considered a report that set out the Council’s Annual Complaints Review for 2014-15.  The report summarised the Council’s complaints performance (Complaint stages 1 and 2) those complaints received by Local Government Ombudsman (LGO), and a limited review of dealing with the Leader and Cabinet Member correspondence.  The report also contained, as an appendix, a copy of the Local Government Ombudsman Annual Letter/Review for the year ending 31 March 2015 and a copy of CityWest Homes Complaint Report for 2014-15.

5.2     Siobhan Coldwell, Chief of Staff, informed the Committee that the Executive Management Team was generally satisfied with how services were handling complaints and that in most departments performance was improving.  She explained that the Council was working on introducing a new complaints reporting system which will enable the Council to analyse data much more comprehensively such as identifying trends.  This will result in officers being able to provide the Committee with a much more comprehensive report in future years.  User acceptance testing was currently being undertaken. Subject to this and other necessary checks being satisfactorily completed the system was expected to go live on 1 April 2016.  The 2015/16 review would be based on the existing reporting methodology. However, part year data for 2016/7 based on the new system could be provided alongside it.

5.3     Sue Howell, Complaints and Customer Manager, summarised the key headlines from the 2014/15 review. There had been an overall decrease in the total number of complaints across all stages of the complaints process (Council Complaints Stages 1 & 2) and that the percentage of upheld complaints had fallen with a significant fall from 14% to 3% at Stage 2.  No serious issues had been raised at Stage 2. The committee was referred to the fact that the Council had introduced a new target for responding to complaints of 10 working days for both stages thereby taking a total of 20 days to go through the whole process. This compared very favourably with other London authorities where most took a total of 30 days or more to go through the whole process.  The LGO Annual Review provided no comment on the Council’s performance.  It has suggested that it may provide some commentary on performance in next year’s annual review letter.  Until the new reporting system has been introduced a full breakdown of the correspondence submitted to Cabinet Members and Ward councillors could not be provided.

5.4     Members asked about the decision not to create a Tri-Borough Complaints Team.  The committee was informed that a shared service would ordinarily only be created if moving to such an arrangement delivered savings.  The Corporate Services Management Board undertook an analysis but found that there was no robust business case for creating a shared service.  Miss Howell explained that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has a different complaints process to the City of Westminster and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.  The former would have needed to have increased resources in order to then make savings.  The current arrangements were open to review should circumstances change in the future.  Miss Howell explained that where complaints were received in relation to a Tri-Borough Service, such as Libraries, these were investigated by the borough in which the service was located.  Not all complaints are dealt with through the Council’s complaints procedure. Adults and Children’s Social Services which are Tri-Borough services have their own statutory complaints procedure.

5.5     Members asked officers to explain the justification for creating a single system to manage complaints and FOI requests.  Miss Howell advised that the complaints team would take on responsibility for some of the processing associated with FOI requests in order to free up the FOI team to focus on dealing with complex cases.

5.6     It was noted that there was a far greater volume of complaints in Finance than any other department both at Stage 1 and Stage 2.  Members asked about the reasons for this.  Miss Howell explained that this largely related to the nature of services within the Finance Department which included Housing Benefit, Council Tax and Business Rates.  Often benefit officers assessing claims require additional information before a decision can be made.  Benefits claimants will sometimes initiate a complaint if their claims are delayed while these checks are carried. Where residents have failed to pay their Council Tax the Council will issue a summons and residents will complain about having to pay the related additional fees.  Other Council tax related complaints related to issues around administration such as problems in setting up direct debits.

5.7     With reference to planning, members queried why the number of complaints at Stage 1 was comparatively low with other departments while the volume of correspondence received by the Cabinet Member was high.  Miss Howell clarified that the volume of correspondence received by Cabinet portfolio was indicative and until the new IT system is live we will not know exactly how many items are received.  However, she considered that one reason for the low volume of planning complaints is that appeals against planning applications are progressed under a separate process overseen by the Planning Inspectorate who is independent of the Council and as such the complaints procedure cannot deal with many concerns residents might raise.  However, members of the community who are concerned about planning applications/decisions may contact the relevant Cabinet Member to express their feelings.

5.8     The Committee noted that the LGO upheld a complaint in respect of a housing needs case and recommended a payment.  This related to a case where a social housing tenant was placed in a property which was too large for his family.  The tenant incurred rent arrears following the imposition of the bedroom tax as his housing benefit no longer covered the rent for the property. Members asked what processes were in place to ensure that homes offered to social housing tenants matched their Housing Benefit allowance.

5.9     RESOLVED:

1.     That the information contained in the Annual Complaint Review 2014/15 be noted.

2.     That the committee welcomed the improvement in performance and in particular the reduced timescale for responding to complaints.

5.10    ACTION:

1.     Provide the committee with progress reports on the implementation of the new complaints reporting system as well as performance data once it has gone ‘live’. 

2.     Provide the committee with a note on the reasons for the increase in complaints concerning CityWest Homes staff behaviour.

3.     Provide the committee with details of the processes in place to ensure that homes offered to social housing tenants match their Housing Benefit allowance.

(Actions for: Sue Howell, Complaints and Customer Manager)