The Committee noted the review of Complaints and Compliments for Quarter 3 of 2023/24.

Members recalled the new definitions of complaints and service requests.  Officers advised that although the Council’s internal policy definitions had not yet been officially changed, pending confirmation of the new joint handling code, Officers were working towards these informally.  As a result, Officers reported slightly fewer complaints for Quarter 3 as a significant number of enquiries were now being processed as service requests.

A brief overview of Housing and Environmental Services was provided, these being the two services with which most people had contact, and therefore continued to have more complaints although both were on a downward trend. 

Because Environmental Services had such a wide remit, Members appreciated a breakdown of issues between the different departments.  It was noted that with service improvements being made now that Grounds Maintenance was back in-house, the number of complaints had reduced compared with the previous year.

Members were informed that the themes in Housing tallied with those reported to the recent meeting of the Housing Committee on the tenant satisfaction survey.  In Quarter 3, a breakdown of the complaints was that 6 related to repairs and maintenance, 3 of these involving the contractor, 5 had neighbourhood disputes involved, 3 were about staff, one service charges and the remaining was a system error which has been corrected.

Members noted that in quarter 3 it was fairly even between the number of complaints upheld or not.  Officers reported that lessons learned included in some areas a need to work on communication with residents and make sure systems were in place to help people understand and navigate the Council’s policies and procedures. 

The Committee also noted a summary of compliments with reference to the exempt appendix.

Officers confirmed that since the last meeting of the Committee, the team looking at processes in Digital Services had made some progress and weekly update meetings with colleagues from other business centres were being held to move the project forward towards the creation of a first version of the CRM build solution.  Officers had also started looking at guidance and identifying key stakeholders in consultation with the Corporate and Senior Leadership teams as well as colleagues in Information Governance to make sure the new systems and processes were GDPR compliant.  This would include a Privacy Impact Assessment Screening with the assistance of the Council’s Data Protection Officer.

Officers continued to monitor equalities information where disclosed. The Committee was pleased there was no evidence to date to suggest anyone had been discriminated against because of holding any of the protected characteristics.

The Committee discussed the process of dealing with persistent and often repetitive complainants, including their correspondence to Councillors.  It was agreed that a balance had to be struck between allowing individuals to make legitimate complaints whilst being dissuaded from raising the same issue repeatedly.  Care had to be taken not to cut off communication with someone if they had a valid concern to raise on a different subject.  Officers were asked to review the Council’s unreasonable complainant behaviour protocol and consider the appropriate level of sanction for complainants meeting the criteria of ‘vexatious’, including the use of Community Protection Notices if appropriate and proportionate on a case by case basis.

Officers were thanked for their report which was duly noted.