The Committee noted statistics with regard to complaints and compliments recording in the corporate registers for this purpose for Quarter 1 of 2023/2024.

Officers reported a spike in complaints (38) mainly across areas of Environmental Services.  As a front-line, high-profile service, this was not unusual in itself and Officers had made very good progress in reducing the backlog that had built up over the reporting period and return to a more representative picture. 

Members asked what the causes were of these complaints and it was confirmed that the majority were service requests that had escalated.  However, communications were improving and more information was being added to the website, including a new ‘report it’ function for Grounds Maintenance which also had a link to the County Council’s website to report Highways and other matters under their remit as opposed to the Borough Council.  Customer Services had also devised a new logging system for complaints made over the telephone so these now have a complete audit trail.

Officers provided an update to the written report that of the 38 complaints, 15 were upheld, 6 partly upheld, 5 not upheld and a further 3 were in progress.  Where complaints were partly upheld it was mainly due to a delay in communicating with the customer.  In many cases the work had been done but there had been a failure to close the loop to update the corporate records.

The backlog of 23 complaints outstanding had been reduced to 9 following a meeting with relevant staff and a subsequent a re-allocation of named Officers dealing with those complaints now with access to the Corporate registers.  It was reported that some of the overdue complaints were not with the Depot or Green Spaces; one was with Assets, another a Housing contractor and another Tenancy Management.

The Committee was advised that it was planned to move forward with a new central database (CRM) hosted by Customer Services and Officers would be working closely with them with access to that database in order to keep records accurate and up to date. 

As with the current system in Customer Services, managed via Jadu software which managed the Council’s external website, a chaser to the relevant staff would be automatically generated a few days before a complaint hit the response deadline of ten working days instead of being done manually. 

The Committee noted that whilst the Council did not have a corporate complaints team the role was largely spread across departments with a network of Officers co-ordinating responses with access to the corporate register.

With regard to compliments, there were 18 at the time of writing the report; the same person in Housing received 2 compliments along with other colleagues who had helped re-house people.  Members were pleased to note that a compliment which came in after writing the report was for Grounds Maintenance with some positive feedback about St Jude’s Cemetery.

Officers had actioned the request made at the last meeting to publicise compliments on the Council’s social media platforms via Communications.  This had started from June onwards, but only publishing where individuals had given their explicit consent.   

This meant that for the next reporting period (July – September), if people had given consent they could be included in the public part of the agenda and anonymised where they had not or there were no named individuals.  Members were content with the proposal to in future send certificates out as and when they occurred to avoid a delay and streamline the process by asking for their consent regarding social media publication when the certificates were issued on behalf of the Committee.

Officers were asked to consider providing more detail on complaints received where possible to identify trends and where lessons could be learned.  However, it was explained that Officers were reliant on the level of detail provided by other departments and whether this could be presented in such a way that individuals would not be identifiable.  Nevertheless, Officers would attempt to do this to assist the Committee in appreciating the types of issues that arose and any underlying causes which Corporate Heads could report.

Officers were thanked for their report which was duly noted.