Agenda item

Quarter 1 Social Care, Public Health and Corporate Complaints Report

[Sarah Campbell, Customer Engagement Manager to present report.]

Minutes:

The Customer Engagement Manager provided an overview of the quarter one social care, public health and corporate complaints report for the following areas:

 

Children’s

Adults and Public Health

Corporate

 

In relation to children’s complaints the Council had received 8 stage one children’s services complaints which was a decrease of 18 cases in comparison to quarter one in 2019/20 and was outlined in Appendix 1.

 

There were no stage two or three complaints received and out of the 10 complaints closed and resolved during this period, no cases were upheld (at fault), 7 cases were partially upheld (partially at fault) and 3 cases were not upheld (not at fault).

 

In relation to adult’s and public health Complaints, the Council had received 12 stage one adult services complaints which represented a decrease of 8 cases in comparison to quarter one in 2019/20 and was outlined in Appendix 1.

 

The Council had received no public health complaints.  Out of the 5 cases closed and resolved during this period no cases were upheld, 2 cases were partially upheld and 3 cases were not upheld.

 

In relation to corporate stage one complaints, the Council had received 74 stage one corporate complaints which represented an increase of 19 cases in comparison to 2019/20, details of which were outlined in Appendix 2. Out of the 74 cases received, 22 were upheld (at fault). The highest figure of 54 complaints referred to Waste Management where out of 54 received, 20 complaints were upheld which was in comparison to 15 stage one complaints received during quarter one 2019/20.  Waste management complaints and service requests increased during this period.

 

The Complaints Team had worked closely with the Waste Management Team to ensure responses were issued in a timely manner and that appropriate remedies were put in place to achieve the best outcomes for customers. It was noted that Covid 19 pandemic restrictions and revised working procedures had impacted on service delivery during this period.

 

In relation to stage two complaints, if a customer remained dissatisfied they could escalate to stage two of the complaints procedure. In this period the council received 5 stage two cases and out of these, two cases were upheld (at fault) and three cases were not upheld (not at fault).

 

The council had received two Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) enquiries; one case for Children’s Services and one case for Regeneration, the outcomes were as follows:

 

• Children’s complaint - outcome, not upheld, no maladministration.

• Regeneration complaint – outcome awaiting final report.

 

The council had also received three enquiries from the Housing Ombudsman (HO) for Wolverhampton Homes and one assessment enquiry from the LGSCO and two assessment enquiries from HO.

 

The Board considered the impact that the pandemic had on the complaints procedure. It was noted that customers were notified that the Council was focusing its attention on addressing the challenges of the pandemic and that confirmation had been given that the Council may not be able to meet the corporate complaint deadline of a reply within 21 calendar days or statutory complaint deadline of a reply within 10 working days.

 

The LGSCO and HO paused casework during this period to allow local authorities to focus on Covid19 and customers were sign posted to their guidance via the Council’s website.

 

Waste management complaints and service requests increased during this period due to the Covid 19 pandemic restrictions including health & Safety matters and the need to protect staff and customers. Revised working procedures had impacted on waste service delivery and resources.

 

It was noted that the Complaints Team had worked closely with the Waste Team to ensure complaints were logged and responded to accordingly, with the focus of achieving the best outcome for the customer.

 

The Board were shown a compliment that had been received in relation to the Waste Team and the service that was being provided.

 

The Board thanked the Customer Engagement Manager for the report and in particular for sharing the compliment with them.

 

A Board member stated that he was uplifted by the report and stated that where there had been increases that was to be expected during the pandemic. Clarification was sought as to the regulations and how the informal complaints were different from the formal complaints and who made that differentiation. It was stated that the decisions were made as a Team when a complaint was received and where appropriate logged as a service request in the first instance and work carried out with the service area to resolve the issue if possible.

 

A Board member stated that residents were very pleased when a service worked well and that this seemed to be doing so. There were however issues with the stickers and getting them out to people, payment for the green bins did not appear to be flexible enough and there had been complaints as to the quality of the purple bins and timeframes to get them replaced. 

 

The Customer Engagement Manager stated that she would feed these concerns back to the relevant service area and confirmed that these areas were representative of complaints received and work was being done with the service area in relation to them.

 

Resolved:

 

a)    That the report be received and noted.

 

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