Agenda item

To present the Annual Report for 2016/17.

The report of the Head of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer setting out the issues arising under the Council’s Concerns and Complains Policy for the period from 1 April, 2016 to 31 March, 2017 along with a summary of whistleblowing issues notified during the same period was presented for the Committee’s consideration. The report 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 Policy – Representations and Complaints Procedure for Children and Adults and are reported annually to the Corporate Scrutiny Committee.

The Head of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer reported as follows –

•           That 191 concerns were received and 74 complaints made during the period covered by the report. Of the 74 complaints 3 were not pursued for the reasons outlined meaning therefore that 71 complaints were investigated and formal responses sent to complainants.

•           Of the 71 complaints dealt with during the period, 12 were upheld in full; 10 were partially upheld and 48 were not upheld. 24 complaints were referred to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales (PSOW) but none was accepted for investigation. Of the complaints to the PSOW, 12 had been dealt with through the internal process during 2016/17 whilst the remaining 12 took their complaints directly to the PSOW.

•           There has been an increase of 12 in the number of complaints received from the 59 received during 2015/16. Some services have received complaints for the first time; some have received complaints on account of an increase in fees; others are due to a change in policy e.g. the 3 weekly bin collection and charges for new bins introduced by the Waste Management Services. These changes led to an increase in the volume of telephone calls to the service which then resulted in concerns and complaints about the time taken to answer calls.

•           The overall rate of responses to complaints issued within the specified time limit of 20 working days is 93%. When responses are late, the service is expected to send a holding response to the complainant to keep them informed of progress; the reasons for the delay and estimated response time.

•           A summary of complaints by service is provided in paragraph 8 of the report.

•           From an analysis of the above, 21% of the complaints received resulted from escalated concerns; 72% of complaints were made directly to the formal internal process and the remaining 7% were sent to the Council by the PSOW who refused to deal with them until the internal Council process had first been exhausted.

•           The Concerns and Complaints Policy places an emphasis on learning lessons from complaints and 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. However, apart from the Waste Management issues reported in the last report and the Waste Management issues this year relating to changes in policy which suggest that any change in policy directly impacting the public should be planned for in advance by services, there are no discernible patterns to the complaints received by the other services. One clear corporate message is the benefit of keeping the complainant informed on the progress of the issues raised.

•           Section 10 of the report summarises the complaints made to the PSOW and their outcomes.

•           Section 11 of the report summarises complaints about Members. These are reported more fully to the Standards Committee.

•           Section 16 of the report provides a summary of whistleblowing complaints reported by services for the period.

It was resolved –

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

•           To accept and to note the Lessons Learnt at Enclosure 1 to the report without further comment.

•           To endorse omitting the Compliments data from future reports and that these be left to be reported and discussed at Service Reviews.

•           To note the recommendation made in the Internal Audit report – Anglesey County Council Ethical Culture – regarding the fact that “the Council does not centrally record its Whistleblowing disclosures” (and) that “there is a risk that the Council will not identify trends and act promptly”, and to note also that this will be a matter for the Senior Leadership Team to decide.

NO ADDITIONAL ACTION PROPOSED.