Issue - meetings

Presented by Ruth Rollings, Service Manager – Customer Relations (Complaints Manager), the following points were highlighted.

• Community directorate complaints had reduced from 634 in 21/22 to 565 in 23/24, a decrease of 11%,
• Compliments reduced from 121 to 45 2023/24.
• The Communities directorate feedback was received mostly by phone rather than online.
• The most significant increase was received during the month of August 2023, which correlated with the introduction of the digital parking permits.
• The top complaints categories for Communities were ‘Outside Complaints Progress’ (services outside the control or operation of the Council), 42%. ‘Communication’, 23% and ‘Physical Environment Issues’, 18%.
• Complaints by team, highest was County Highways, 37%, followed by County Highways Network,15%.
• Over 80% of complaints were closed within timescale. Those outside of the timescale were closed on average in 40 days or over.
• Some of the lessons learned and actions taken over the past twelve months include better communication with those making complaints, managers to provide customer service training with staff, proper reading of instructions and apologies given. 

Ruth Rollings welcomed questions from members.

In response to Councillor Chilvers, Ruth Rollings advised that benchmarking would be looked at going forward. Regionally, Warwickshire County Council compare well with complaints escalated to the Ombudsman. Data relating to Ombudsman complaints could be included in future reports.

In reply to Councillor Feeney, Ruth Rollings advised that the complaints system did not allow the capture geographically of where complaints were originating.

In response to Councillor Chilvers, Ruth Rollings advised that the full report was shared with corporate board and each directorate disseminates the findings and lessons learnt to each service. 

Mark Ryder added that the report was scrutinised at a directorate and service level. This gives the directorate areas to look at and work on.

In response to Councillor Dave Humphreys, Ruth Rollings advised that partial upheld complaints were ones with multiple facets where some of the elements were upheld while others were not.

It was noted that the Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee considered and commented on the contents of the report.