Issue - meetings

The report sets out complaints performance in Brent for the period April 2017 to March 2018 and focuses on the nature of complaints and the learning and improvements from complaints and Ombudsmen cases. 

RESOLVED:

      i.        Cabinet noted Brent’s performance in managing and resolving complaints.

    ii.        Cabinet reviewed progress in 2017/18 with the eight agreed recommendations from the previous annual report in 2016/1, noting that the report which had been developed into a Complaints Service Team Action Plan, would seek to focus on the following in the year ahead:

·         Ongoing monitoring of corrective actions to help ensure promises to put things right were kept

·         Monitoring of the root cause of complaints and supporting service areas to improve complaints hotspots

·         Improving the quality of complaints handling through training, quality checks and support to service areas.

Councillor Margaret McLennan, Deputy Leader, introducer the 2017/18 Annual Complaints Report, setting out complaints performance in Brent for the period April 2017 to March 2018. The report, she stated, focuses on the nature of complaints and the learning and improvements from complaints and Ombudsmen cases. 

Councillor McLennan stated that a summary of the root cause of complaints and improvement actions by council departments in 2017/18 is provided in Appendix C.

Councillor McLennan stated that the key headlines from complaints performance in 2017/18 are as follows:

·                All Stage 1 complaints volume (corporate & statutory – 1,614 cases) has decreased by 4% (â)

·                All Stage 2 complaints volume (corporate & statutory – 220 cases) has decreased by 8% (â)

·                There were 21 LGO cases upheld against Brent in 2017/18, compared with 17 cases in 2016/17 (á)

·                The total amount of compensation paid by Brent (c£73.8k) decreased by 5% (â)

·                The total number of cases awarded compensation (135 cases) decreased by 34% (â)

·                The top 3 root causes of complaints in Brent were customer care (17%), repairs (8%) and parking enforcement (6%).

RESOLVED:

      i.        Cabinet noted Brent’s performance in managing and resolving complaints.

    ii.        Cabinet reviewed progress in 2017/18 with the eight agreed recommendations from the previous annual report in 2016/1, noting that the report which had been developed into a Complaints Service Team Action Plan, would seek to focus on the following in the year ahead:

·         Ongoing monitoring of corrective actions to help ensure promises to put things right were kept

·         Monitoring of the root cause of complaints and supporting service areas to improve complaints hotspots

·         Improving the quality of complaints handling through training, quality checks and support to service areas.