The report of the Director of Policy, Performance and Reform is attached.

The Committee considered a report of the Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer which presented the Council’s annual performance for 2020/21 in respect of the management of corporate and social care complaints, Councillor and MP enquiries, as well as information requests

The report provided information and key messages on:

• An overview of complaints and enquiries management - a similar global number of complaints was received (c2100) in comparison to the previous year  with the majority of complaints having been received in the last quarter 
• Performance Management of:

1)    Stage one and Stage Two Corporate Complaints - a fall (from 74%- 58%) in the timeliness in of completion of Stage 1 complaints was reported.  There was however a reduction in number of complaints that were escalated from Stage 1 to Stage 2

2)    Councillor and MP enquiries, including response rates

3)    Social Care Complaints: a six-fold increase in social care complaints was reported

4)    General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) andFreedom of Information Act requests (FOIA) requests – a 40% increase in volume was reported

5)    Local Government Ombudsman – there had been an increase in volume  from 20 to 37 in the year, with a fall in the number of complaints upheld by the Ombudsman.

6)    Praise – 380 instances of praise were received.

The introduced the main headlines of the report, highlighting the impact of the pandemic on changes to service delivery, redeployments factors, as well as the impact of new and additional priorities which inevitably affected the amount of time available for officers to respond to complaints.  The implementation of the new complaints monitoring system (Infreemation) and the initial transition to the new system had also impacted on timeliness of responses due to issues accessing the data. 

There was a discussion about the difference between service requests and formal complaints.  The Director of Policy, Performance and Reform explained that whilst service requests are logged on a separate system, repeated requests from a given resident are dealt with as a complaint and picked up by the Complaints team in the usual way and were therefore included in the performance data.

Discussions moved to how the data gathered on complaints is analysed with specific reference service delivery, business planning and priorities and ultimately how it informs the Audit Plan. The Director of Policy, Performance and Reform described the role of the Complaints team, including Complaints Managers and their significant role in helping to identify increases in areas of complaint, reductions in timeliness of responding to complaints in consultation with Service Managers. Where serious allegations existed (eg fraud, misconduct etc) these are  shared with  the relevant department for further action, however discussions around areas of particular focus for Audit Planning activity are agreed at senior officer level between the Director of Policy, Performance and Reform and the Head of Audit and Risk Management.

A member suggested that future complaints reports to committee should include additional information from each directorate setting out how complaints are dealt with  in reference to governance arrangements and procedures and should include some narrative on how service had changed as a result of those complaints.  The Director of Policy, Performance and Reform agreed to this.

Decision

1.    To note the report.

2.    To request that future reports on complaints should include additional information from each directorate setting out how complaints are dealt with reference to governance arrangements and procedures and should include some narrative on how service had changed as a result of those complaints.