Issue - meetings

To consider a quarterly update report on complaints (Place).

The committee received a report of the Senior Assurance Officer (Complaints) with regard to the performance of complaints made against functions within the Place Directorate.  In presenting the report, the Senior Assurance Officer noted that there had been an increase in the number of learnings being taken from complaints received.

The Chairman noted that the report continued to be developed and additional information had been included following requests made by the committee, incorporating a further breakdown of complaints information, including those investigated by the Local Government Ombudsman and an overview of compliments received.  He was pleased to note that the council were incorporating learning from complaints.

In response to a point about overdue timescales, the Senior Assurance Officer confirmed that the council had been managing a large number of unreasonable behaviour instances during the previous quarter.  The way these were being managed had had an impact on the timescales in this area.

The Executive Director of Place highlighted the opportunity to hold a briefing for members of the committee in respect of the council’s vexatious complaints policy and wider work being undertaken.  It was suggested that this could be considered when the new scrutiny committees were in place from May 2020.

The Chairman noted that it would be useful to provide a similar overview of complaints to the other scrutiny committees.