Agenda item

Louise Church (Delivery Lead – Admissions) informed the committee that:

• Feedback increased from 2021 and was now at 50% of pre-pandemic levels
• Most feedback received was online
• Almost all feedback that required responses were responded to inline with the service level agreement
• Most complaints received were related to communication, physical environment issues and community protection issues

Councillor Sinclair noted that the same issues from last year’s report were in this one too and this implied that the changes that were promised were not acted upon. The case management system did not exist yet and the root causes were not mentioned in the report. 

In response to Councillor Sinclair, Louise Church agreed to respond to his comments by email. They were working hard with ICT with the planned case management system so members of the public could easily submit their feedback through it. They managed to get a new reporting tool which was why some figures did not look the same as last year, but they were still waiting for this system. It should be launched in mid-late 2024. Most complaints received by the Communities Directorate were not valid e.g. there were a lot of complaints about civil enforcement (parking tickets). 

Scott Tompkins added that most feedback they dealt with were in direct emails from all teams to members of the public. None of these emails are recorded so they were not able to see what worked well with responses in one team and what did not work well in other teams. He agreed to raise this with Mark Ryder and contact ICT to find out why the feedback system took so long to implement. David Ayton-Hill concurred with this. 

Following a supplementary from Councillor Sinclair, Louise Church noted that customer relations had experienced an increase in feedback. There were uncategorised complaints because the system was not good, and it was more important to respond to this feedback then categorise it. Customer relations worked with all teams across the Council so if something was not categorised then it meant customer relations could respond themselves.  

Scott Tompkins added that actions were implemented after last year’s report e.g. three dayresponses to emails and implementing their own response monitoring system within the directorate. Their responses were monitored by their directorate leadership team. 

Louise Church noted that the Customer Relations Team were part of the Resources Directorate. Change was planned through feedback and redesigning their service so it would be more like NHS Pals.   

Councillor Chilvers concurred with the points raised by Councillor Sinclair and said the report needed to be more qualitive.    

In response to Councillor Chilvers, Louise Church stated that the new system should help provide more qualitive data. With outcomes not quite matching, there is an oddity whereby a complaint can be closed (whether upheld or not) with no reason given. Staff were discouraged from doing this, but they naturally wanted to defend their service. Apologising is not an admission of guilt, and the Council is sorry that someone felt a complaint needed to be made.  

In response to Councillor Fradgley, Scott Tompkins said that local authorities have a Section 58 defence. The Highways Act states that if the highway authority does what is required to inspect and maintain the network regularly, then they cannot be held liable for a defect that causes someone to fall on the pavement. As long as WCC can show they do regular inspections then they can use Section 58 defence which repudiates 98% of claims. Instead of this claim money being given out the authority can use it to fix the problems.  

Following a supplementary from Councillor Fradgley, Scott Tompkins confirmed that if a utility operator has raised or damaged iron work which caused someone to fall then it would be their responsibility to resolve any claims. This came under Section 80 of the Act which stated that they must fix any raised surface work they cause. 

Louise Church noted that all constituents should be treated with respect when making a claim. Councillor Fradgley confirmed they were.