Agenda and minutes

To agree the Council’s procedure rules for remote meetings.

RESOLVED –

THAT the remote meeting procedures set out in the agenda be agreed.

Apologies for lateness were received from Councillor Luisa Porritt.

No declarations were made.

Broadcast of the meeting

The Chair to announce the following: ‘In addition to the rights by law that the public and press have to record this meeting, I would like to remind everyone that this meeting is being broadcast live by the Council to the Internet and can be viewed on our website for six months after the meeting. After that time, webcasts are archived and can be made available on DVD upon request.

If you have asked to address the meeting, you are deemed to be consenting to having your contributions recorded and broadcast, including video when switched on, and to the use of those sound recordings and images for webcasting and/or training purposes.’

Any other announcements

Broadcast of the meeting

The Chair announced that the meeting was being broadcast live by the Council to the Internet and could be viewed on the website for six months after the meeting. After that time, webcasts were archived and could be made available upon request. Those who had asked to address the meeting were deemed to be consenting to having their contributions recorded and broadcast and to the use of those sound recordings and images for webcasting and/or training purposes.

Adjournment of meeting for minute’s silence

The Chair announced that the Marie Curie ‘Shine a light’ one minute silence would be happening at 8.00pm. He said that, in order to allow the members to participate, the meeting would be adjourned for five minutes at this time.

There were no deputations.

There was no such business.

Report of the Borough Solicitor.

This is London Borough of Camden’s annual complaints report for the period 1st April 2019 to 31st March 2020.

It is a single report that includes information on complaints across all directorates. The report also provides information for decisions issued by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) and the Housing Ombudsman (HO) in the same period.

Part III of the Local Government Act 1974 sets out the role of the Ombudsman in terms of investigating and reporting maladministration. Section 5A of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 then sets out requirements for the Monitoring Officer of a local authority – who in Camden is the Borough Solicitor – to report to the Cabinet on those cases where an Ombudsman has made a finding of maladministration.

This report is therefore presented to Cabinet as well as the Resources and Corporate Performance Scrutiny Committee and covers those cases where there have been routine mistakes or failings and the Council has agreed to make remedies and changes in line with the Ombudsman’s recommendation.

Consideration was given to the report of the Borough Solicitor.

In his introduction of the report, the Borough Solicitor outlined to Members that he and the Service Manager Business Support were involved from a corporate complaints aspect, their role was to look after, monitor, and record data concerning complaints and to advise on procedure. He continued that it would be more appropriate to raise specific questions about individual service’s complaints to the service areas directly and suggested this could be done at the relevant scrutiny committee.

The Service Manager reminded Members that the report covered the 2019/2020 municipal year and would not include data from during the pandemic period. He said that the pandemic had had an impact on bringing the report to the Committee, as there had been the intention to bring complaints reports to the Committee earlier in the municipal year.

In response to questions from the Committee, the Borough Solicitor and Service Manager made the following comments:

·       Where it said in the report that it took 20 days for a response to given to a complaint, it did not mean that the resident would hear nothing for those 20 days. The service handling the complaint would be in contact with the resident throughout the process.

·       The timescale for responding to complaints was important but not at the expense of quality.

·       Members wanted to know what were the reasons for longer waiting times for complaint resolution. The Service Manager agreed to look at providing the mean wait times for complaints in future reports. The amount of complaints resolved between 21 and 40 days could be found in Appendix 2.

·       Action by: Service Manager – Business Support

·       Different departments tended to receive complaints of differing complexity; this was reflected in the varying response times.

·       Members asked why there had been a change to the complaint response timescales. Officers told the committee that in April 2019 the complaints policy and process was changed to a 10-day timescale for handling complaints. Before this, the timescale varied across services, the update standardised the process.

·       There was a new complaints computer system being implemented that would allow for more complex breakdowns of the data on complaints. Members were interested in learning more about complaints through richer data metrics.

·       A Member of the Committee acknowledged that complaints take many forms. Officers agreed with a Member suggestion, which in any event reflected current plans, of gathering and using all forms of complaints (complaints, member enquiries, freedom of information requests and legal claims) to understand trends in complaints and possible areas for improvement.

·       In response to concern from a Member that complainants the process of further escalation was difficult. The Service Manager said that officers had been conducting more robust stage 1 investigations and discussing solutions with the complainant before the complaint reached stage 2. This meant that whilst there were fewer stage 2 complaints, it was generally the more complex cases that reached that stage and, as a result, there was an increased rate of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

There was no such business.