Agenda item

This report seeks to provide an overview of Brent’s performance in handling and resolving complaints and presents the Complaints Annual Report for 2024-25.

The Committee received the Annual Complaints Report 2024-25 from the Corporate Director of Finance and Resources which provided a breakdown of complaints received by departments and the top five issues of complaint for those respective departments, including the number of upheld, partly upheld, not upheld, rejected or withdrawn for each department.

The Chair invited questions and comments from the Committee in relation to the report, with the following comments and issues discussed:

• In relation to complaints about repairs, the Committee highlighted that the number of complaints had not formed part of the KPIs for the contractors delivering repairs. Emphasising the officer time that went into investigating complaints and the extent of upheld complaints in that area, the Committee suggested KPIs relating to complaints should be incorporated into relevant contracts. Spencer Randolph (Director of Housing, Brent Council) responded that this was something he would want to look at implementing with the two new contractors, Wates and Mears, as well as how the Council could be recompensed when complaints were upheld. The new contracts were still being embedded, and this was something he would take forward to contractor meetings by April 2026. As he had not been in post when the contract terms and conditions were agreed, he did not know if these mechanisms were available, but if they were he would want to make use of those. Members made the point that the Committee had recommended incorporating complaints into contractor KPIs at the previous annual complaints review and re-emphasised that recommendation. Officers present agreed that there were contracts in place that would benefit from those additional KPIs if they were not already included.

• The Committee acknowledged the high level of upheld complaints within housing and asked how they were being managed and responded to. Councillor Donnelly-Jackson responded that complaints were an opportunity to learn and improve services. The Council did not want residents to be in a position where they had to complain, and wanted to adopt a culture where all feedback in any forms was accepted, heard, learned from, and actioned, in order to improve services. In 2024-25, housing initiated a full review of complaints handling and promoted learning reviews from that. Training had also been reviewed. The service was also logging compliments in order to collate best practice where services were getting things right. Where a complaint was serious enough, the service would look into compensating the resident for their distress, so it was important there was robust financial oversight of complaints handling to ensure this was not excessive but proportionate to the issue raised.

• The Committee felt that there was a significant proportion of complaints that were escalated to Stage 2 that were upheld, and asked why these had not been filtered and upheld at Stage 1 and whether training would be delivered to assist with that. Tom Cattermole advised that training had initially supported officers in how to deal with improving first time resolutions and embedding the complaints code of conduct. Staff were being trained on understanding and working to new statutory requirements, particularly around timeliness and quality of responses. Often, when a complaint was upheld, it was due to timeliness. Staff training also looked to ensure a culture of empathy, fairness and respect towards tenants and leaseholders in dealing with complaints. Spencer Randolph added that part of staff training also involved helping staff recognise and identify a complaint was being made and ensuring it was logged as such as opposed to an enquiry, in order to ensure they were being learned from. Amira Nassr added that the Complaints Team undertook quality checks on Stage 1 complaints and kept a spreadsheet where the written quality or other aspects of the response was not up to standard and went back to departments in order to ensure the quality of the response improved going forward. For some areas where there was poor quality handling of complaints, the Complaints Team required a Head of Service to sign-off the Stage 1 response.

• The Committee raised concerns that Brent was the joint 11^th highest Council for upheld complaints investigated by the LGSCO. Councillor Donnelly-Jackson explained that the LGSCO investigated complaints relating to Housing Need, Adult Social Care (ASC), education, children and young people and healthy streets. Complaints from Social Housing Tenants around Housing Management were investigated through the Housing Ombudsman. She further explained that of those complaints investigated by the LGSCO, 9 had been for Housing Need and 4 for ASC, and the figures in the report represented the combined total which were not purely for Housing Need. She advised members that Housing Need were often dealing with very vulnerable individuals and families who may struggle to understand the parameters of homelessness legislation, and often the Housing Need Team was having difficult conversations with clients as many did not understand why they could not get a home. Some of the upheld complaints related to acceptance of the main duty, quality and suitability of the accommodation offered, including its location, and the discharge of cases. As such, she explained that the number of upheld complaints was due to the significant demand for homelessness assistance and the lack of accommodation supply available.

• Noting the comments about timeliness often being one of the reasons a complaint was upheld, the Committee asked whether the department was well placed to improve that given the turnover of staff in the area. Tom Cattermole advised that additional resource had been assigned in order to deal with the volume of complaints and a team had been recruited that sat between the Housing Need and Complaints departments to address the increased volume.

• Members raised some suggestions for presentation of the data in future reports, including year on year comparisons and more upfront narratives to understand trends.

In seeking to bring consideration of the item to a close, the Chair thanked officers and members for their contributions and invited members to make recommendations and information requests. As an outcome of the discussion, the following suggestions for improvement and information requests were made:

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

1)    Incorporate complaints performance as a core performance indicator in the procurement and renewal of Council contracts, with appropriate measures included in contract monitoring frameworks where feasible.

INFORMATION REQUESTS

1)    Provide further details on the Residents’ Complaints Group, including:

i)      when it was established and its purpose;

ii)     its terms of reference;

iii)   current activity and planned future work; and

iv)   an estimated timeframe for reporting back to the Resources and Public Realm Committee on the impact of its work.

Please note, whilst the suggestions for improvement, and information requests agreed as an outcome of each item were based on discussions and issues identified during the meeting, the final requests have been refined following the meeting to improve clarity and readability, while remaining consistent with the Committee's discussions and intended outcomes.