Agenda item

Members received a presentation from the Corporate Policy and Diversity Team Leader providing them with an update on Corporate Complaints, Member and MP Enquiries for the three months from 1 July – 30 September 2014.  The Committee was informed that

Corporate Complaints:

•         The total number of complaints logged at Stage 1 on CRM between July and September had risen: 308 (2013) and 572 (2014) – though part of the latter figure included complaints recorded on the Housing Service’s OHMS system and would not have been included in the previous report

•         572 Stage One complaints had been investigated with 498 being resolved within 10 working days (Q2 2014)

•         Of those completed over the 10 working days, 46 were completed under 15 working days and 27 were completed within 40 working days

•         32 (5.30%) complaints had been escalated to Stage Two (the target was not to exceed 10%)

•         Performance had, during the period, improved.  87% of Stage One complaints were completed within 10 working days (Q2 2014), compared to 80% (Q2 2013).  Performance had stayed the same at 87% since the previous quarter (Q1 2014) and the target was 90%

•         The two areas with the highest number of Corporate Complaints logged on CRM were Homes & Housing (344) and StreetCare (122)

The services with the highest proportion of complaints remained the outward facing ones: StreetCare (131) and Homes and Housing (315).  Regulatory Services (which now included Trading Standards, Licensing and Environmental Health) had 38 cases.

Member & MP Enquiries:

In the same period, MP and Member enquiries

•         1,234 Member / MP Enquiries were received (90 of which were recorded on the Housing OHMS system and which would not have been included in the previous year’s figures).  Of these 976 (79.09%) enquiries were completed within 10 working days.

•         By comparison, between 1 July and 30 September 2013 1,139 Members / MP Enquiries were logged.  Of these 1,000 (87.80%) enquiries were completed within 10 working days.

•         In the previous quarter (1 April to 30 March 2014), 840 Member / MP Enquiries had been received (108 of which were logged on OHMS) and of these 661 (78.69%) had been completed within 10 working days.

Of these, StreetCare (832) and housing (260) received the majority of Members / MP enquiries and the total number of enquiries logged on CRM had increased from 1,139 in Q2 2013/14 to 1,234 in Q2 2014/15 (but the latter figure included cases recorded on OHMS which were not on previous reports) and the total number of enquiries logged on CRM in Q1 was 850.

1,234 Member Enquiries were investigated with 976 being resolved within 10 working days and of those completed over the 10 working days, 125 were completed within 15 working days and 135 went over 15 working days, but all were completed by 65 working days.

The Committee was informed that performance had declined year on year:

79% (976 of 1,234) of enquiries were completed within 10 working days (Q2 2014), compared to 88% (1,000 of 1,139) (Q2 2013) but had improved since the previous quarter 78% (661 of 850) this year.  The target remained 90%

In conclusion, Members were informed that plans were already in hand to streamline the complaints process further and make it more effective by:

•         Setting up a complaint best practice group:  This would be a group to share best practice, better understand complaint issues, solve problems staff were encountering and improve outcomes.

•         Producing Member Enquiries forms online.  Members would then be able to use the forms to log enquiries through the Portal.  These had now been drafted and were awaiting testing.  It was anticipated that they would go live before Christmas.

•         To accompany this, there would be additional Portal Training for Members.  In order to deliver this, one-to-one training sessions for Members on using the Portal would be set up.  It was considered appropriate to do this in order to

•         Increase the use of the Portal.  Currently only 18 Members had logged an enquiry through the Portal.  The iPad user group and Members Development group would be involved in order to increase Member awareness and encourage more Members to use the facility – which would assist speeding up the process

A Member observed that when trying to use the Portal, they had encountered difficulties in completing the transaction.  The Corporate Policy and Diversity Team Leader stated that this would be taken back and the technological elements investigated, whilst the other requests, such as: sharing information with other Members, identifying individual complaints by respondents so that they were immediately clear which one was being replied to and a request to be able to attach photographs would also be discussed and reported back to the Committee.

The Committee noted the oral update and thanked the Corporate Policy and Diversity Team Leader for her presentation.