Agenda item

The Committee noted a report of the Corporate Director, Neighbourhood Services, the purpose of which was to present progress for quarter 3 of 2010/11 in relation to corporate complaints, compliments, comments and suggestions (for copy see file of Minutes).

The Service Development Manager was in attendance to present the report. He advised that there had been a substantial increase in the number of complaints which was largely attributed to the long period of inclement weather which affected front line services. Some of these complaints related to the lack of information regarding the winter maintenance and revised bin collections, however the Service Development Manager advised that this information was available through the website and County News. In total there had been 525 complaints received for the quarter which was an increase from 206 complaints in the same quarter of the previous year. However attention was drawn to the fact that the inclement weather in the previous year had occurred in quarter 4.

The Service Development Manager advised that 86% of stage 1 complaints and 83% of stage 2 complaints had been acknowledged within 2 working days, both figures being reflecting improved performance since the previous quarter.

Members were advised that Neighbourhood Services had recently established a complaints group to embed the complaints process within the service grouping. The work of the group would be centred around the proper logging of all complaints and how complaints could be turned around quicker.

In relation to learning outcomes the Service Development Manager advised that further to previous requests from the Standards Committee, examples of learning outcomes were now included in the report and additional functionality had been added to the complaints CRM system to allow services to log these against the complaint or suggestion.

The Service Development Manager advised that 59 suggestions had been received during the quarter, all of which were considered on a case by case basis for learning outcomes. In addition a very large number of compliments had been received with an overall increase from 323 in quarter 2 to 526 in quarter 3.

In response to Members clarified that the reason the number of unjustified complaints was high was due to the Council not being at fault. For example, complaints had been received relating to a lack of bin collections during the period, however the Council was not at fault as the collections needed to be scaled back for health and safety reasons, as such the Council had not been at fault.

The Service Development Manager agreed that a percentage increase for compliments would be included in future reports.

In relation to paragraph 21 of the report the Service Development Manager clarified that just 44% of stage 2 complaints were dealt with within the target time of 10 working days as many stage 2 complaints were particularly complex and required officer investigation. However he advised that the complainants were regularly corresponded with progress updates on their complaints.

The Chair advised that she had again visited the Corporate Complaints section and had witnessed many of those complex complaints. She continued to be extremely impressed with the work of the Corporate Complaints Team.

Members also commended those staff who had worked hard during the inclement weather to ensure that disruption to frontline services was kept to a minimum.

Resolved:

That the report be noted.