Meeting documents
Cabinet
Wednesday, 5th November, 2003
|
Bath & North East Somerset Council |
|||
|
MEETING: |
COUNCIL EXECUTIVE |
AGENDA |
|
|
MEETING DATE: |
November 2003 |
||
|
TITLE: |
|||
|
WARD: |
All |
||
|
AN OPEN PUBLIC ITEM |
|||
|
List of attachments to this report: |
|||
1 THE ISSUE
1.1 This report provides an analysis of customer complaints received by the Council during 2002-2003.
2 RECOMMENDATION
2.1 Consider the contents of this report and whether any further specific actions are required.
3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
3.1 There are no financial implications directly arising from this report
4 THE REPORT
4.1 The Council produces an annual report of complaints as part of the Corporate Complaints Procedure and in order for the Council to learn from its mistakes. The Procedure was written in 1996, revised in 1998 and a new Complaints Leaflet was released in August 2002. Further improvements are currently in progress to improve the leaflet's accessibility.
4.2 Not all complaints are dealt with through the corporate procedure. The Education Service has separate procedures to meet statutory requirements in particular cases and Housing & Social Services have their own procedure that covers both statutory requirements and other complaints. All such complaints are included in the totals enclosed, however the report does not include disagreements over a properly made decision, such as school appeals and planning application appeals.
4.3 We do, of course, encourage customer feedback of all types, and when complaints are received we try our very best to achieve customer satisfaction. 96% of complainants receive a response within our customer care standards (see below) and 35% are considered unjustified. However of the 480 justified complaints, an apology is often sufficient to satisfy the customer; in order cases we amend our procedures etc. In all cases we learn from mistakes made and take corrective action as appropriate.
4.4 It is not possible to analyse trends meaningfully over the years because methods of recording complaints and our procedures have changed over time. However, the general level of complaints in 2002/03 was about the same as in 2001/02.
4.5 The attached Appendix 1 shows that we received 739 complaints last year, compared with 747 in the previous year. 86% were justified (85% in the previous year), and in 96% of cases we replied within the corporate response standards (95% in the previous year). The standards are to acknowledge within 5 working days and provide a full response within 20 working days (if more time is needed we shall explain why).
4.6 Every justified complaint is regretted, however the attached appendix shows that the total number of complaints received represents a very small proportion of all customer contacts with the Council each year - less than one complaint in every one hundred thousand transactions. The key reasons identified in justified complaints were when customer's reasonable expectations were not achieved - for example poor cleanliness in leisure centres and failure to collect rubbish when promised.
4.7 Last year's report was debated by the Corporate Issues and Partnerships Overview & Scrutiny Panel on 9th December 2002. It resolved that the Panel:
(1) Considered and noted the actions taken in the report
(2) Suggested that a section on the `lessons learned from complaints' should be incorporated in future reports on complaints
(3) Outlined the following actions which could improve customer service and satisfaction levels, thus reducing the cost and time in handling complaints:
- A telephone number should be available on the appropriate service areas for complaints
- A named contact person would be useful
- Include name and contact details of local Members of Parliament
4.8 We have responded as follows;
(1) Included in the attached report is a section on lessons learnt from complaints
(2) The new leaflet includes service contact telephone numbers and contact person (post titles are used rather than names due to staff turnover)
(3) A reference is also made to contacting local Members of Parliament
4.9 We have also summarised the outstanding key issues surrounding complaint reporting. Recommendations to address these issues will be reported by the Solicitor to the Council, who is currently conducting a review of the complaints process. The key issues identified were:
(1) There is some inconsistency across the Council in the way that customer complaints are recorded and monitored. Service areas have interpreted the existing complaints policy in a variety of ways and we need to reinforce consistency.
(2) Consequently, in some instances complaints data is not directly comparable,
(3) We could improve the process whereby we use complaints information to develop service improvements and to learn lessons.
(4) Managers need to be more aware of the advice available to them regarding complicated complaints, data protection, and freedom of information.
(5) We could improve the analysis of the ethnicity or disability of the complainant to see if there are specific issues affecting these groups and their access to services.
4.10 The Solicitor to the Council's review of the Corporate Complaints Procedure referred to in paragraph 4.8 will seek to ensure that it incorporates good practice and meets customer's expectations. The review will include recommendations to address the issues identified in this report, in recognition of the knowledge that the best performing councils often show the highest levels of customer complaints, because the community knows that its opinion counts and the organisation knows that their feedback is vital to development.
|
Contact person |
Peter Rowntree, Operations Director. 01225 394567 |
|
Background papers |
None |