Interviews with:

·  Ellie Kershaw, Policy and Performance Manager; and

·  Catherine Negus, Policy and Research Assistant

Catherine Negus, Policy and Research Assistant introduced the Quarter 3 Complaints Monitoring report.  She informed the Committee that in Quarter3, October to December 2011 there had been 102 complaints and 86% of those complaints had been resolved within the agreed timescale. This was down on the previous period.

Housing had the highest number of out of time complaints because of long term sick leave.  They were now receiving assistance from Executive Support. Ten stage two complaints had been received, 90% of these had been resolved within the agreed timescale which showed an improvement on the previous quarter. 28 responses had been received to the Complaints Questionnaire, 29% of those contacted were satisfied or very satisfied with the way their complaint had been dealt with.

An issue highlighted to Members was that staff were not always recording the equalities aspect of complaints. Members were informed that the Core Brief (a document that was circulated to all staff at Team Meetings to inform them of important information) would highlight the need for staff to be aware of this when handling complaints. Miss Negus also explained that in some cases only details of the original complaint or our response to it were being logged, the requirement for both would also be highlighted in the Core Brief and reported to CLT (Corporate Leadership Team). The Officer highlighted that within the last quarter two complainants had been registered as vexatious.

The Committee questioned the progress of the new correspondence and complaints system.  They were informed that a consultant had come into to look at work carried out by the IT department and some progress had been made.  However, a share point system which matched the desired specifications was now available from an external provider.  The Council would be able to purchase this and adapt it to Maidstone Borough Council’s exact requirements at approximately the same cost as developing a new system. Members voiced their concerns at this as previous updates given in Quarter 1 and 2 had been on the implementation of a new system. They suggested to Officers that the Council’s approach to the development of the correspondence system should have been in line with the principles of Prince II project management as widely advocated by the Council and the progress reported to a project board.

Ellie Kershaw, Policy and Performance Manager, explained that there were a number of Officers now trained in Prince II but training had taken place after this project had begun.  As a result it was included in the day to day workload of IT who had had staffing problems.

The Officer explained that the system currently being used was corrupt, meaning that notifications were not being sent when complaints were running out of time and Executive Support were having to remind managers. Members felt that this should not be an excuse for poor performance. They felt that complaints should be monitored by the responsible Manager.  The Manager should also be responsible for analysing complaints and identifying trends and these issues should be addressed in the forward planning of the service. There were concerns raised as to whether the issue was symptomatic of a bigger problem such as staff resources as the authority had suffered staff losses.

The Committee considered complaints handling critical to the management and effectiveness of the organisation. It was questioned whether complaints should be further categorised by ‘seriousness’.  Miss Kershaw explained that if a complaint was important to the customer it should be important to the authority and it was not for Council Officers to make that distinction.  She added that determining the seriousness of a complaint would be costly as it would be a manual job. Members were informed that the new correspondence system would allow a general costing to be allocated to complaints.

Miss Kershaw highlighted the issue of content in complaints handling. She explained that work was being done with Housing as some complaints were actually appeals against the housing points system for housing allocation.  The Committee discussed Development Control and the representations made during the planning process.  They considered the handling of representations made after a decision had been made and whether these should be considered as complaints.  Members felt that all issues should be logged as complaints initially and then evaluated and categorised as appropriate at a later stage. The Officer agreed that it was beneficial to be cautious and informed Members that the new correspondence system facilitated this approach. 

Members considered the way in which complaints reported by Councillors on behalf of residents were dealt with.  They were informed that the new system would allow for two names to be allocated per complaint, the Councillors name and the resident’s name, making it easier for the complaint to be tracked.  The Officer told members that all complaints whether reported by a Councillor or resident should be recorded in the same way.

Members queried whether the Council had many complaints made about the High Street Project.  The Officer confirmed that to date there were one recorded but that as it was a project they may have been kept on file separately.

Members were updated on the complaints training.  The pilot session, run in conjunction with the Hazlitt Theatre, had been carried out two weeks prior and a focus group had followed. The Officer reported a positive response and explained that the training would be rolled out to front line staff initially and a session could be run for councillors if this was of interest.  She explained that a similar session could be developed on customer care.

It was recommended that:

a)  The implementation of the complaints/correspondence system should be reviewed and the remainder of the project should be undertaken utilising the project management principles of Prince II as advocated by the Council;

b)  The Committee remains informed on trends and reoccurring issues for the future analysis of complaints that will be available to them via the new complaints/correspondence system.  Training needs should be identified by Managers; and

c)  Whilst the complaints system is not sending reminders, Managers should be monitoring complaints to ensure they do not go out of time.