Issue - meetings

To provide the annual review of corporate complaints.

The annual report on corporate complaints was presented to the committee. It was noted that each year further work was undertaken to look for trends in complaints to identify problem areas but due to the small numbers, no trends were evident.

A member asked for more detail on the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman case that had been remedied and on the Housing Ombudsman case. It was agreed that this information would be sought and sent to members outside of the meeting.

The reason for the high number of refuse & recycling complaints was queried and the need to register these as complaints was queried. It was noted that whilst ‘missed bins’ were reported under the service’s own procedures, should this be a repeated occurrence it was accepted as a complaint. Members acknowledged that, given refuse & recycling was a service that every household in the borough used, the number of complaints was relatively low and not a cause for concern. Members asked that refuse collectors be reminded of the importance of replacing a bin from the same spot as it was collected as this was the reason for some of the complaints. The Executive member for neighbourhood services confirmed that operatives were frequently reminded of this.

RESOLVED – the report be noted.