Agenda item

Report of the Borough Solicitor.

This is the London Borough of Camden’s annual complaints report for the period 1^st April 2021 to 31^st March 2022.

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.

The report also includes information on other types of formal enquiries which are often linked to complaints:

-       Member Enquiries and MP Enquiries.

-       Freedom of Information (FOI) Requests.

-       Judicial Reviews

The Council’s Constitution states that the Ombudsman decisions on cases where there have been mistakes or failings (called “maladministration”) should be presented to Cabinet on an annual basis for their information only. Therefore, the report provides the decisions issued by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) and the Housing Ombudsman (HO) in the same period and this report will be presented to Cabinet on 14^th December 2022.

The report, how it is presented and what it contains, continues to develop and evolve and as in previous years suggestions for improvements are sought from Members.

Consideration was given to the report of the Borough Solicitor who, along with the Service Manager – Business Support, introduced the report.

Members commented that there had been an increase in complaints around the quality of service and asked whether this was mainly housing related complaints. The Service Manager – Business Support, said that generally, most complaints fell under the same handful of categories. Quality was one area of these high complaint categories, though it did vary year to year. Most of these complaints were around housing repairs and property management.

The Head of Property Customer Services and Engagement, responded to Members that there had been a 40% increase in repairs requests so the increase in complaints was proportional. They went on to break down the main reasons behind complaints was repairs work taking multiple visits to fix an issue. The repairs team was in conversation with contractors to help them understand the frustration felt by residents and seek an improvement. The number of visits and time taken to complete a repair is getting better, based on the number of repairs carried out, but there were still areas that needed improving.

A Member asked what work was being carried out to improve systems where there were multiple elements to a complaint or members enquiry that involved more than one team. The Service Manager – Business Support that it would be too logistically difficult to split a complaint into the individual components for a response which is why in these instances there is a lead service who take responsibility for liaising with different departments and responding to the resident.

Members discussed the automated responses with the use of no-reply emails. Residents found the system difficult to navigate as there was no contact information provided to follow up their complaint or query. The Service Manager – Business Support responded that they were having conversations with colleagues in IT and system developers. The intention was for contact details of a named officer to be sent out with the reply email, however, some of the reply messages had not been clear about who the resident would need to contact. IT were looking into making the necessary improvements to the system. The Service Manager – Business Support agreed to provide information around the IT process of no-reply emails being sent to residents.

Action by: Service Manager – Business Support

In response to a member question on the increase in Stage 2 complaints being upheld, the Service Manager – Business Support said that Camden were investigating the cause of this. There had been more Stage 1 complaints and proportionally more Stage 2, however they needed to understand whether the increase in upheld Stage 2 complaints was due to complaints not adequately being handled at Stage 1.

Members were interested in the ambition for Tenancy Management to carry out a home visit to every single tenant and whether this was achievable. The Head of Landlord Services responded that this was an achievable goal and that there were over 60 members of staff that would be carrying out the visits.

The Borough Solicitor commented that the increase in the number of complaints could be attributed to the process of encouraging resident feedback. A Member said that whilst this was the case, it was important that systems, such as the email responses, were working as they should.

In response to questions about the repairs service, the Head of Property Customer Services and Engagement gave the following key responses:

·       Residents were contacted about their experience with the repairs service and contractor, any negative feedback about contractors would be raised by Contract Managers to seek improvement.

·       Reporting complaints was easy and accessible with a variety of options for those who could not use email, for example phone and text service.

The Director of Customer Service commented that Contact Centre staff received ongoing training throughout the year. Camden were moving towards developing culture of conversations, moving away from transactional contacts. 

Members discussed Member enquiries and how best review the data around them. The Borough Solicitor agreed to send an email to all members about logging Member Enquiries in the proper way, to allow data on them to be captured.

Action by: the Borough Solicitor

The Head of Member Support reinforced the importance of logging member enquiries using the correct system. They recommended that Members utilise their support officers to log enquiries.

RESOLVED –

THAT the report be noted