Agenda item

Joint Report of the Head of Digital Transformation & Business Support and Customer Relations Manager on feedback, compliments, representations and complaints received and handled by the County Council, attached.

The Committee considered the Report of the Customer Relations Manager which provided a quarterly update on the volumes and themes for all types of customer feedback (compliments, comments and complaints), letters from Members of Parliament and complaints being dealt with by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman about the Council. In addition, it provided information regarding the Council’s performance in responding to and learning from the outcomes of complaints. It covered quarters 1 and 2 (April to June and July to September 2019).

Appendix 1 and table 1 contained a summary of feedback related activity within the reporting year to date.

The Committee was reminded of their comments made at the Committee meeting on 16 July 2019 that the Leadership Group be asked to re-emphasise the importance of dealing with complaints in a timely manner and furthermore noted that the meeting at which this issue was to be raised had been deferred to 25 November 2019.

Members noted that;

·         the number of stage 1 complaints had continuously reduced through most of 2018-19 and had remained low in quarters 1 and 2 of 2019-20 (See appendix 1 – table 2); 

·         there had been a continual decrease in Stage 2 complaints received quarter on quarter in 2018-19, the number of Stage 2 complaints received in 2019-20 had remained low. It was hoped that the lower numbers remained as a direct result of improved Stage 1 responses and earlier intervention by managers (Appendix 2 – table 6);

·         there had generally been a decline in numbers of LGSCO complaints received in 2018-19, and this had continued into the first half of 2019-20 (Appendix 2 – table 9);

·         18% of LGSCO complaints were upheld over 2017-18, which compared to 30% across 2018-19 and 53% across quarters 1 and 2 of 2019-20, strongly suggesting an upward trend;

·         it had not been possible to log all the quarter 2 compliments received to include them within the Report, but table 13 (Appendix 2) showed those received in quarter 1 and the numbers recorded were higher than in each of the quarters in 2018-19, which was encouraging; and

·         the number of MP enquiries reduced quarter on quarter throughout 2018-19 and remained low in 2019-20 (Appendix 2 – table 14).

Members commented and asked questions on the number of complaints upheld in Children’s Services, attitudes of staff and perceived rudeness as a recurring theme, that 57% of stage 2 complaints closed were made in time (which was just over half), the recording of phone calls and how they were used for training purposes and the representation of data (percentages verses numbers).

It was MOVED by Councillor Mathews, SECONDED by Councillor Twiss, and

RESOLVED

(a) that the contents of the Report be noted;

(b) that the comments of the Committee, as outlined above, be referred to the Leadership Group for their consideration; and

(c) that the Manager of the Customer Service Centre be invited to a future meeting of the Committee to discuss call recording and associated performance management and training.