Agenda item

The Cabinet Member for Enforcement, Community Safety & Customer Services presented the report of the Director: Communities, Customer and Commercial Services.

The purpose of this report was to set out amendments to the Complaints policies for Corporate, Children’s Statutory and Adult Statutory Complaints and to update Cabinet on the Council’s response to complaints between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021.

The Council’s complaint policies had been in place for some time and had been refreshed and updated to reflect latest best practice.

In total there were 491 complaints received across the Council in 2020/21 from 473 complainants. This was against a backdrop of millions of service transactions that took place every week including 10.2 million refuse collections and 229,000 calls to the Authority’s call centre each year. These numbers included new services provided to support residents during the Covid pandemic. The total number of complaints therefore remained a small proportion of transactions.

There had been an overall reduction in the number of complaints received by 16%. In addition, there had been a 35% increase in customers that had complimented Council services, with 392 received compared to 290 in 2019/20.

The Leader of the Conservative Group raised concerns over the condition of the My Telford app.

In response to the Leader of the Conservative Group’s concerns, the Leader of the Council clarified that an updated version of the app was due to launch in the near future. Telford and Wrekin Council was one of the first Council’s to launch such an app nationwide and was possibly the first to have developed a second version of its own app which was due to roll out shortly.

RESOLVED –

i.          That the changes to the new Complaints Policies available online at Appendix A, B and C be approved. These policies would be introduced with immediate effect;

ii.         That delegated authority be granted to the Director for Communities, Customer & Commercial Services in consultation with the Lead Cabinet Member for Enforcement, Community Safety and Customer Services to make amendments to these policies going forward in line with changes to the appropriate legislation;

iii.        That Cabinet review the Customer Feedback and Statutory Complaints Reports for 2020-21 in respect of Adult Statutory, Children’s Statutory Complaints and Corporate Customer Feedback and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Review Letter 2021; and

iiii.       That the significant reduction in complaints received in 2020/21, the increase in positive feedback and the improvement in complaint handling performance be noted.