Agenda item

To  provide  the  Committee  with  the  most  recent  annual  letter  to  the  Council  from  the  Local Government  and  Social  Care  Ombudsman  (LGSCO).    The letter  relates  to  complaints processed by the LGSCO in the financial year 2023/24.  It is intended to establish a practice through which these annual letters are reported to this Committee in the future and, thereby, to extend  awareness  of  such  complaints  and  the  opportunity  for  learning  by  the  Council  from complaints.

The Committee considered a report of the Assistant Director (Governance) (A.2) which provided it with the most recent annual letter to the Council from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO).  That letter related to complaints processed by the LGSCO in the financial year 2023/24.  It was intended to establish a practice through which those annual letters were reported to this Committee in the future and, thereby, to extend awareness of such complaints and the opportunity for learning by the Council from complaints.

Members were informed that the Annual Letter from the LGSCO was normally issued in mid-July, with this year’s letter being issued on 17 July 2024.  The letter set out a summary for the previous financial year of the numbers of complaints received by the LGSCO concerning this Council, which services they related to, the decisions reached in the year on complaints made to it and compliance with recommendations from it on upheld complaints.  The 2024 Letter from the LGSCO (in respect of 2023/24) was set out at Appendix A to the report (A.2). 

It was reported that the Annual Letter was sent by the LGSCO to the Chief Executive, the Leader of the Council and the Chairman of this Council’s Resources and Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee.  A brief summary of the statistics from the Annual Letter, and the upheld complaints identified in the Annual Letter for the year concerned, had been submitted to the Chief Executive’s Officer Management Team, as part of developing learning across the various upheld complaints. From this year’s Annual Letter, and by comparison with the same letters received in 2021, 2022 and 2023, a comparison had been produced which was set out in the ‘Background’ section of the report.

The Committee was made aware that, where an individual report on a particular complaint to the LGSCO had identified maladministration, the Monitoring Officer was under a duty to report to Cabinet (in respect of executive functions) or Council (in respect of non-executive functions). The Annual LGSCO letters had been referenced in reports on individual upheld complaints to Cabinet and Council.  Currently, there was no established practice to report Annual Letters to a body of Councillors to consider.  Through this report, it was proposed for this Committee to take on this role, as part of its terms of reference related to: ‘assess external regulatory reports and monitoring any quality improvement programmes where required.  Comments are provided to Cabinet as appropriate’. 

The Committee was also advised that there was an intention to review the Council’s corporate complaints procedure, following a similar review of the Council’s procedure for complaints made in respect of the Council’s role as landlord (the Housing Complaints Procedure).  Council Housing complaints generally fell within the scope of the Housing Ombudsman and not the LGSCO.  However, this was not always the case (and this was relevant when looking at the summaries of cases referenced in the ‘Background’ section of this report).  The LGSCO had recently adopted a new Complaint Handling Code and this broadly mirrored the Code used by the Housing Ombudsman.  The Council’s complaints procedure would be reviewed having had regard to the LGSCO’s Complaint Handling Code and there might be a consequential need to review the Council’s Housing Complaints Procedure too.  This point had been approved by Cabinet at its meeting held on 24 May 2024 (Minute 12 referred).

In addition to the straight forward reporting of the numbers and outcomes of complaints to the Ombudsman, their Annual Letter to the Council for 2023/24 had included the following statement as to the timeliness of responses to its enquiries:-

“During the year, we made enquiries of your Council in five complaints. In four cases the responses were late. Concerningly, in one case we were required to remind the Council of our power to issue a witness summons before we received the information we had requested.

I ask that you take action to improve the timeliness of responses to our enquiries. It is important we are provided with the information we have asked for promptly, and that, where you encounter delays, you keep us informed. If there is any support my office can provide to help improve the situation, please do let me know.”

This issue of timeliness of responses was a matter that had been referenced by the Chief Executive to all Members of Management Team with a view to resolving the issues referenced above.

It was noted that overall numbers of upheld complaints referred to the Ombudsman about this Council’s delivery of services remained relatively low.  Some pointers from those complaints for Officers were:-

·      Be aware of reasonable timeframes for delivering services and find solutions to achieve these.

·      If opportunities to review service delivery present themselves we should take them.

·      Where we have a policy we should follow it.

·      Keep records of decisions taken.

·      Be thorough, whether that is matching payments to applications or considering all the various threads of a service requests.

·      Do not stray from an impartial consideration of the matter you are dealing with.

·      When there is a complaint, make sure we keep to timescales for responding, update the complainant if delays are likely and respond to all points raised.

From the above upheld complaints by the Ombudsman since 2020/21, a summary of the service areas involved, reporting of the findings and of the cases was set out in the aforementioned ‘Background’ section of the Assistant Director (Governance)’s report (A.2).

The Assistant Director (Governance) & Monitoring Officer responded to Members’ questions on her report.

After discussion it was moved by Councillor Sudra, seconded by Councillor Fairley and unanimously:-

RESOLVED that –

(a)    the Committee notes the report and approves a practice whereby Annual Letters from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) are submitted to the Audit Committee for consideration in the future as part of its role in assessing external regulatory reports and monitoring any quality improvement programmes where required, with comments to be provided to Cabinet as appropriate; and

(b)    Cabinet be informed that the following matters highlighted from this Committee will be considered as part of the Officers’ review of the Council’s Complaints Procedure which will also have regard to the LGSCO’s Complaint Handling Code:-

(1)    the timeliness (or otherwise) of the Council’s responses to the LGSCO’s enquiries; and

(2)    the Committee’s desire to have a standing item on the agenda for each of its formal meetings in relation to Complaints and that the designated Member with responsibility for Housing Complaints (currently the Portfolio Holder for Housing and Planning) and the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Finance and Governance be required to attend as appropriate.