Next week, Wednesday 4 September, Cabinet will be presented with our annual report, which provides an overview of our customer complaints and compliments received from 2023 to 2024 highlighting both positive experiences and areas for improvement.
Some of the key highlights from the report include:
- We’ve received a total of 438 customer compliments.
- A total of 448 customer complaints were registered, with 1 being withdrawn, bringing the total to 447.
- Most complaints were resolved at the early resolution stage, with 231 being considered at this stage and 217 requiring formal investigation.
- 94% of complaints met their statutory and procedural timescale for completion at all stages in the process.
- The outcomes from complaints showed 181 cases being upheld, 127 partially upheld, 118 not upheld, 8 inconclusive, and 13 pending completion.
- We’ve received 33 contacts from the Ombudsman offices, with 16 requiring formal investigation.
We’ll always work hard to understand and learn from customer feedback to improve our services. This includes:
- Continuing discussions with services receiving the highest number of upheld complaints to review and improve service delivery.
- Reviewing the present system for managing complaints and compliments to identify and implement improvements.
- Delivering complaints and compliments training to services.
- Continuing to use information identified from complaints and provided by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to improve and develop our processes and procedures.
- Proactively working with all services to maintain high performance levels and meet statutory complaint requirements and timescales.
Cllr Robert Frost, Cabinet Spokesperson for Core Services, said: “We’re dedicated to learning from people’s experiences and adapting our services which is essential alongside seeking a remedy with our customers. Whilst we’ve seen a small decrease in the number of compliments and a small increase in the number of complaints, I’m pleased to see that performance remains high in our response to these with 94% meeting timescales for completion.
The full report is available on our website.