Agenda item

The Business Manager, Complaints and Enquiries introduced the report on Annual Complaints Report for Housing and Social Care Services for 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 and provided an oral summary of the key highlights.

It was reported that across the Council the number of informal complaints remained similar when comparing the 2017/18 figure of 3,077 with the 2018/19 figure of 2,756. The number of Stage 1 complaints registered also remained broadly similar when comparing the 2017/18 figure of 860 with the 2018/19 figure of 837. For the purposes of this Committee, the complaints were broken down as follows:

Housing Service

It was noted that of the 157 Stage 1 complaints, 22 had been upheld, 44 had been partially upheld, 84 had not been upheld and 7 had been withdrawn. 

The number of Stage 2 complaints had risen from 10 for 2017/18 to 24 for 2018/19. It was reported that of the 24 Stage 2 complaints, 2 had been upheld, 1 had been partially upheld and 21 had not been upheld. There had been no Stage 3 complaints. 16 complaints had been considered by the Ombudsman - 3 were upheld, 1 partially upheld, 21 not upheld and in the other 10 the Ombudsman decided not to investigate.  

It was noted that 67 compliments had been recorded for 2018/19 which was a 179% (43) rise from the 2017/18 figure of 24.

Children and Young Peoples Service

It was noted that of the 55 Stage 1 complaints, 5 had been upheld, 18 had been partially upheld, 28 had not been upheld and 4 had been withdrawn. 

There were two Stage 2 investigations during 2018/19. Both complaints were partially upheld. There had been no Stage 3 complaints. 5 complaints had been considered by the Ombudsman - 1 was partially upheld and in the remaining 4 they decided not to investigate. 52 compliments were received for 2018/19 which was slightly lower than the 2017/18 figure of 60.

Adult Social Care

It was noted that of the 40 Stage 1 complaints, 5 had been upheld, 7 had been partially upheld, 25 had not been upheld and 3 had been withdrawn. 

9 complaints had been considered by the Ombudsman - 1 was upheld, 1 partially upheld, 6 not upheld and in the remaining 1 they decided not to investigate. 68 compliments were received for 2018/19 which was more than the 2017/18 figure of 56.

Members' Enquiries

11,308 Members' Enquiries had been received for the period 2018/19 which was a 37% increase from 2017/18 of 8,110. Waste Services, Planning and Building Control and Housing Services accounted for 5813, 1891 and 1240 enquiries respectively.  

The duplication errors on page 36 of the agenda was corrected.

It was confirmed that the restricted persons register was accessible by officers and Members via the Intranet, the Council’s internal website. Further information on how to access the restricted persons register would be provided to Members. In response to Ombudsman feedback, the Council’s autism policy was being developed including specifying a named person. All policies were available on the Council’s website although the location of them may have changed due to the website being upgraded.

It was noted that complaints that were dealt with by the Ombudsman did not always go through stage 1, 2 and 3. This was because there were different complaint procedures that applied for example Children Services had 3 complaint stages, Adult Social Care 1 complaint stage and the Corporate complaints procedure had 3 stages but it gave officers flexibility whether to use all three stages or not before a complainant could escalate their complaint to the Ombudsman.

Feedback and learning from the Ombudsman was fed back to managers to avoid any re-occurrence of issues. Learning memos were used to inform learning for all officers involved with the complaint.

When comparing Hillingdon's performance against other neighbouring local authorities, Hillingdon had compared well against them, with much lower levels of complaints. The figure for complaints dealt with at Stage 1 of the Adult Social Care complaint procedure showed that 40 complaints were dealt with at Stage 1 and 9 were dealt with by the Ombudsman. This suggested that a much higher number of complaints were escalating to the Ombudsman (23%) when comparing with other neighbouring local authorities.  It was explained that this could was due to historical complaints that had been received in the previous year and concluded by the Ombudsman in 2018/19. It was also mentioned that the volume in itself was not significant however of those 9, 1 had been upheld and 1 had been partially upheld.

Members thanked officers for the full and thorough report.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.