Agenda item

To present the report of the Head of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer.

The report of the Head of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer providing information on issues arising under the Council’s Concerns and Complaints Policy for the period 1 April, 2017 to 31 March, 2018 was presented for the Committee’s consideration. The report also included Social Services complaints but only those where the complainant was not a service user. Service user complaints are dealt with under the Social Services Representations and Complaints Procedure and are reported annually to the Corporate Scrutiny Committee.

The Corporate Information Governance Manager reported that during the period of the report, 112 concerns were received and 72 complaints were made. Of the 72 complaints, 1 complaint was withdrawn prior to investigation (Housing) so 71 complaints were investigated and formal responses sent. An analysis of concerns and complaints by service is provided in section 8 of the report. The overall rate of responses to complaints issued within the specified time limit (20 working days) was 92%. Of the 71 complaints dealt with during the period, 17 were upheld in full, 6 were partly upheld and 48 were not upheld. Nine complaints were escalated to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales; 8 of these were rejected and 1 resolved by early resolution. Each of the 9 complaints escalated to the Ombudsman had been through the internal process. No formal language related complaints were received during the year. Neither were any whistleblowing disclosure received during 2017/8 and there were no outstanding matters from 2016/17.

The Officer highlighted that the Concerns and Complaints Policy places an emphasis on learning lessons from complaints thereby improving services. Enclosure 1 to the report seeks to explain what lessons have been learnt and any practice which has evolved as a consequence.

The Committee considered the information presented and whilst it noted that the number of complaints was reasonable given the increasing financial constraints within which services are operating making complaints more rather than less likely, it noted also that no whistleblowing disclosures were reported with no outstanding matters from 2016/17. The Committee sought clarification of whether this pattern is replicated in other authorities or whether it signifies that whistleblowing procedures are not sufficiently documented and/or communicated throughout the Authority and are therefore not understood.

The Corporate Information Governance Manager said that he did not have benchmarking data in relation to whistleblowing disclosures; the absence of any such disclosures in 2017/18 may be an anomaly but is more likely to be continuation of the pattern in previous years wherein the number of whistleblowing disclosures has not been high. 

It was resolved –

•           To accept the report as providing reasonable assurance that the Council is compliant with the processes required under its Concerns and Complaints Policy and Whistleblowing Policy/Guidance.

•           To endorse the main messages from the Lessons Learnt Table at Enclosure 1 of the report, namely -

•           That the Audit and Governance Committee reminds all Heads of Service that the Customer Care Charter must be followed when dealing with the public at all times and to ensure regular training and refresher training as required.

•           That from now on a new corporate system is to be implemented whereby services will be required to complete a formal lessons learned log at the end of the complaints process for any complaint upheld or partly upheld.

NO ADDITIONAL ACTION WAS PROPOSED