Issue - meetings

The report of the Director – Finance and Corporate Services is attached

The Service Manager – Finance and Corporate Services presented the report of the Director – Finance and Corporate Services, which summarised the customer feedback received by the Council during 2020/21 and provided a comparison to previous performance as well as to other authorities. Key points included:

· 49 complaints were received by the Council at Stage 1 of its complaints process – this is comparable with recent years despite the service pressures and hardships to residents caused by the pandemic

· The percentage of complaints escalated past Stage 1 has increased slightly from 20.0% in 2019/20 to 22.4% (11 from 49)

· Consistency in handling complaints has stayed at a high level, as has the number of complaints that are responded to within target time – 48 out of 49 – this is despite the additional work pressures of the last eighteen months

· Analysis of the 49 complaints received in 2020/21 showed that 61.2% were unjustified

· Seven complaints were directly related to the pandemic

· Fourteen complaints were referred by complainants to the Local Government Ombudsman – none of these complaints were upheld

· The Council received 155 compliments about its services in 2020/21 – 23 more than the previous year.

The Group raised concerns that there was a slight trend increase in the number of complaints received by the Council. The Service Manager believed that this was not a cause of concern and may be due to factors such as population increase, the increase in the use of social media and more residents being at home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Group were pleased to note that any complaints which were a matter for the County Council to deal with were passed onto them by the customer services team and the resident would be informed that the complaint had been passed on to the relevant officer and complaints team at the county council.

It was RESOLVED that the report of the Director – Finance and Corporate Services is noted and accepted as a true record of customer feedback in 2020/21.