Agenda item

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

The report of the Director of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer providing information on issues arising under the Council’s Concerns and Complaints Policy for the period 1 April, 2020 to 31 March, 2021 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 Policy - Representations and Complaints Procedure for Children and Adults and are reported annually to the Social Services Improvement Panel.

The Director of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer reported on the main points as follows –

·         That during the reporting period, 104 concerns were received and 43 complaints were made. Of the 43 complaints, 42 had received a full response by the 31 March, 2021, with the remaining complaint requiring significant further investigation prior to providing a final response to the applicant.

·         That of the 42 complaints dealt with during period, 2 were upheld in full, 1 was partly upheld and 39 were not upheld. Nine complaints that had been through the internal process were escalated to the Public Service Ombudsman Wales (PSOW) and all 9 were rejected.

·         The number of complaints investigated in the year fell by 26, down from 69 in 2019/20; a breakdown of concerns, complaints and compliments by service is provided in the table at paragraph 8 of the report.

·         The overall rate of responses to complaints issued within the specified time limit (20 working days) was 90%. When responses are late services are expected to send a holding response to the complainant to keep them informed of progress and to explain the reasons for the delay.

·          From an analysis of the table at paragraph 8 of the report, 9% (up from 8% in 2019/20) of the complaints received resulted from escalated concerns which suggests that services are dealing effectively with concerns thereby limiting formal complaints. A further 9% (4 of the 43) were sent to the Council by the PSOW who refused to deal with them until the internal Council process had first been exhausted. Complainants may also take their complaints directly to the formal stage of the internal complaints process and this accounts for remaining 82% of the complaints received.

·         The Concerns and Complaints Policy places an emphasis on learning lessons from complaints thereby improving services. Previous recommendations endorsed by the Governance and Audit Committee have now become embedded as part of business as usual when dealing with complaints. Appendix 1 of the report explains what lessons have been learnt from the 2 upheld and 1 partly upheld complaints.

·         Whilst there is no internal right of appeal against a decision reached in response to a complaint, the Concern and Complaints Policy includes the option of escalating a complaint to the PSOW where the complainant remains dissatisfied with the Council’s response. There were 18 complaints relevant to this process lodged with the PSOW within the timescale of the report. None of the complaints were taken into investigation.

·         During 2020/21 no code of conduct complaint was received by the PSOW against a County Councillor. Limited information about such complaints is formally reported to the County Council’s Standards Committee twice a year.

·         No formal language related complaint was received during the year. However, one expression of concern was received as documented and was resolved without it being escalated into a formal complaint. Any other issues relating to the Welsh language are reported annually in the Welsh Language Standards Annual Report.

·         During 2020/21, 2 whistleblowing concerns were received an outline of which is provided in the table at paragraph 14 of the report. Both concerns were acted upon and the results fed back to the whistle-blower by the Monitoring Officer.

·         During the year the Corporate Concerns and Complaints policy was reviewed and amended to bring it into alignment with the complaints handling guidance under the Complaints Standards Authority created by the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019. The amendments were minor and have not changed the process that has been in force since April, 2013.  The Ombudsman confirmed on 26 May, 2021 that the Council’s policy was deemed compliant with the guidance.

·         The Council’s Constitution has been amended to reflect the Governance and Audit’s new responsibility under the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021 to review and make reports on complaints handling.

The Committee in considering the report raised the following points -

·         Whether an elected member who is the subject of a complaint to the Ombudsman has right of access to the evidence against him/her. The Director of Function (Council Business)/ Monitoring Officer advised that where the PSOW decides to open a case and undertake an investigation into a complaint against an elected member then evidence relevant to the subject matter of the complaint has to be shared with the elected member against whom the complaint is made who then has  a right of reply.

·         Noting that a high proportion of the complaints made are attributable to three services, the Committee wanted to know whether they share a common theme thereby making it easier to predict and/or prevent further complaints in future. The Director of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer advised that whereas the Services’ Complaints Officers are asked to identify any trends/patterns and/or issues with regard to complaints received, the Annual Report to this Committee documents the complaints upheld rather than the complaints lodged.

·         Whether a lack of response to correspondence and/or not phoning people back as promised is as common a complaint as anecdotal evidence provided to elected members might suggest. The Director of Function (Council Business)/Monitoring Officer advised that the number of such complaints is not particularly high indicating that what elected members hear about complaints of this kind is not borne out by the actual number of such complaints coming through the complaints process. A new corporate telephone system is to be installed which it is hoped will also aid and facilitate responsiveness.

·         That it is gratifying to note that a total of 464 compliments were also received during the period covered by the report which testify to what services across the Council are doing right especially since a considerable number of those compliments relate to services which have regular contact with the public.

It was resolved to accept the report as providing reasonable assurance that the Council handles its complaints effectively.