Agenda item

The Executive Director Core Services submitted a report which was presented by the Service Director Business Improvement, HR and Communications prefacing the Annual Review Letter for the Council of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) for 2021 a copy of which was appended.

Ms C Dobby, Complaints Manager, was also in attendance virtually to answer Members detailed questions.

The report, in outlining the background to the work of the Ombudsman, indicated that a key message for 2021 related to a national ‘erosion of effective complaint functions in local authorities’.

The letter provided information about three key indicators:

·         The percentage of complaints upheld – 83% of complaints were upheld (compared to 72% in other authorities).  This was based on 6 investigations for the period 1^st April, 2021 to 31^st March, 2021

·         Compliance with Ombudsman recommendations – this was 100%

·         Satisfactory remedies provided by the authority – In 0% of upheld cases was the authority found to have provided a satisfactory remedy before the complaint to the Ombudsman (this compared to 11% in other similar authorities).  Clearly the Council was disappointed with this as it had not previously received such feedback and therefore, questioned what had gone wrong.  It was also unclear what criteria had been applied at arriving at this decision.  In addition, the Council had not been furnished with examples of where the Ombudsman considered the Council to have not offered a satisfactory remedy and, therefore, further clarification had been sought to enable a better understanding to obtained of this finding.  A benchmarking exercise had been undertaken with other similar authorities and showed a comparative picture citing failings in the provision of satisfactory remedies to complaints received

The Ombudsman had acknowledged that the prolonged budget and demand pressures placed on services in response to the Covid pandemic had amplified the issues highlighted.  In addition, reduced capacity had had a great impact on authorities’ abilities to deal effectively with complaints.  It was accepted, however, that more work needed to be undertaken in seeing a satisfactory remedy before a complaint was referred to the Ombudsman.  This was a key priority for the Council and the report provided a brief resume of how this would be undertaken. 

It was also noted that whilst there had been a reduction in the number of complaints, those that were submitted were often of a more complex nature that in previous years and were more difficult to work through.

The Council’s ability to provide quality services to the public was a top priority but equally it was recognised that a difficult financial period and with ever increasing pressure and public expectations it might not always get things right.  The ability to offer satisfactory remedies to complaints, or responses to information requests, would continue to remain of critical importance and the Committee would be kept informed of progress made in the delivery of mandatory complaints training and the impact this had on the quality of complaint responses issued.

There was some concern that particularly in relation to the third indicator the letter provided no indication of the number of complaints compared to other organisations and there was, therefore, no baseline upon which to compare Barnsley against.  There was little clarity about what this meant, and it was felt, therefore, that this was unsatisfactory.  The Service Director commented that this was the first time that such a comment had been included within the annual letter.  Further information and clarification on this matter had been sought from the Ombudsman.  Questions had also been asked about the comment regarding the erosion of the complaint functions within local authorities particularly in view of the investment that Barnsley was putting into dealing with customer feedback and complaints.

RESOLVED that the Annual Letter of the LGSCO be noted and the response from the Council with regard to the delivery of mandatory complaints training to staff in order to ensure a higher level of satisfactory remedy is offed before a complaint is escalated to the Ombudsman be acknowledged.