Decision details

To note and agree content of the Annual Complaints Report prior to publication.

Matter for Decision

The report provided an analysis of the complaints and compliments received by the Council during 2019/20 under the Corporate Complaints, Compliments and Comments procedure.

 

Decision of Executive Councillor for Finance and Resources

      i.         Approved the draft Annual Complaints Report for 2019/20, and approved the report could be published on the Council’s website.

 

Reason for the Decision

As set out in the Officer’s report.

 

Any Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

Not applicable.

 

Scrutiny Considerations

The Committee received a report from the Head of Corporate Strategy and the Business and Development Manager.

 

The Committee made the following comments in response to the report:

      i.         Thanked officers for the report and said it was helpful that the report included more contextual information around the areas where complaints were counted and assessed as this enabled councillors to scrutinise the report.

    ii.         Referred specifically to the Waste Service and p59 of the agenda and noted that complaints were still at high levels compared with 2017/18 levels. Questioned why complaints regarding bins not being emptied were treated as a service request and not as a complaint.

   iii.         Questioned if the lessons learnt by the Waste Service could be applied to other services across the council.

  iv.         Thought there were greater problems with the commercial four wheeled bins rather than domestic bins, and wondered if this was due to cross-contamination or the bins not being put back where they should be. Asked for commercial and domestic bin complaints to be separated in future reports.

    v.         Acknowledged the good work done by the Waste Team, which was evident in the £25,000 surplus and was also pleased that changes made to the service were now coming to fruition.

  vi.         The number of complaints regarding the Housing Assets and Maintenance Department had increased.  There were several tenants who were unhappy with the failure of the service to deliver its programme of maintenance and repairs. The narrative accompanying the complaint assessment did not adequately explain why there were a number of complaints.

 vii.         Noted a report which was later on the agenda which talked about digital transformation and the Responsive Repairs Appointing System which may assist the Housing, Maintenance and Assets Department improve their service.  He asked whether the system was on target to be introduced in November 2020.

 

The Head of Shared Waste Service and Head of Housing Maintenance and Assets said the following in response to Members’ questions:

      i.         99.82% of bins were collected on time.  There were occasions when bins were collected late and this could be due to staffing issues / road closures etc but crews would always return to the properties to collect the bins.

    ii.         The Waste Service visited resident’s properties 1 and a half times a week and therefore had a huge interaction with residents.  Lessons were learnt from formal complaints and the number of formal complaints had reduced.  Processes had been put in place to ensure that issues raised through the complaint system did not arise again.

   iii.         Complaints made to the Waste Service were now put at the heart of what the service does. All of the Waste Service Management Team reviewed complaints to see if there were trends and problems in certain areas. They tried to find solutions to patterns of problems rather than just dealing with individual complaints.

  iv.         Confirmed the way in which bin complaints were recorded would be looked at and noted that there had been issues with communal bins stores and a lot of work had been undertaken with residents in those communal locations.

    v.         Previously complaints regarding the Housing Maintenance and Assets Service were not always being logged through the complaint system and staff were instead individually responding to tenants and meant that officer weren’t always able to see patterns in complaints. She acknowledged that there had been an increase in the number of complaints and dissatisfaction with the service and a full-service review had been undertaken.

  vi.         It was confirmed that the Responsive Repairs Appointing System was due to go live in November 2020.

 

The Committee unanimously resolved to endorse the recommendations.

 

The Executive Councillor approved the recommendations.

 

Conflicts of Interest Declared by the Executive Councillor (and any Dispensations Granted)

No conflicts of interest were declared by the Executive Councillor.