Agenda item

To receive the annual complaints performance and service improvement report.

Mr John Fox, a Housing Tenant addressed the Housing and Communities Overview and Scrutiny Panel and raised concern that despite completing stages 1 and 2 of the Council’s complaints procedure, he’d been denied an opportunity to provide feedback on that process.  A copy of the statement read out by Mr Fox, was attached.

The Strategic Director Housing and Communities thanked Mr Fox and confirmed that he would review the concerns raised and contact him personally to discuss the concerns.

The Service Manager – Legal and Information Governance presented the report detailing the Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement covering the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, draft self-assessments against the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s and the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Codes and the governing body’s response.

The report also outlined some of the key changes to member scrutiny of complaints following the Complaint Handling Codes from both the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the Housing Ombudsman taking effect on 1 April 2024.

It was confirmed that this was the first time that the annual complaints report had been brought to the Panel and this was due to providing increased scrutiny on the housing elements of the report, prior to the report being submitted to Cabinet for approval. 

Members were requested to review section 6 of the report which dealt with complaints from tenants and provided a review of the number of complaints received, complaint findings, themes of complaints, the stages, timescales and some of the key headline data.  Section 8 would cover tenant satisfaction measures.  Section 9 detailed learning and provided examples of case studies where complaints had been used to drive service improvements and make positive change.  Section 10 detailed Ombudsman decisions which had had been received.  The annual report also included examples of where complaints had not been accepted and the reasons for this.

A Panel member asked whether there was a process for logging and managing complaints received by members.  In response, it was confirmed that complaints would be passed through to the relevant department to work with the complainant to resolve the issue and that these complaints would not be separately recorded.   Any complaint which escalated to a corporate complaint, would be captured within the main figures. 

A member noted that there has been a 474% rise in complaints reported to the Housing Ombudsman for all landlords, concerning substandard living conditions between 2019-20 to 2024-25, so the Council’s own increase was not out of step.  In response, it was confirmed that there had been an increase in both corporate and housing complaints.  This was potentially due to changes in complaint handling regarding transparency, accessibility and raising awareness of the process.  An example was provided of using the Home Talk magazine to communicate the complaints process.  Complaints regarding the Council to the Ombudsman remained relatively low and it was felt that this was due to the Council trying to resolve complaints at earlier stages, although complainants were always advised of their right to escalate a complaint.

It was noted that in the recording of complaints, they often had multiple themes and therefore Officers had to make a subjective judgement as to what the most prevalent theme was.  One area was delays and missed appointments, which could be down to staff availability, general organisation, etc.  This was being reviewed to try and reduce the incidences by monitoring recruitment and retention of staff and  whether external pressures and planning in advance, would be able to mitigate those circumstances.

A Panel member felt that although there had been an increase in complaints, it was positive that the public and tenants felt confident that they could complain.

RESOLVED:

That the Panel noted the Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report 2024/25.