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  ...  view the full minutes text for item 104