Agenda item

The Executive Director - Core Services submitted a report on the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Annual Review Letter 2022, with the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman letter appended to the agenda.

Whilst this was a public document and had already been published by the LGSCO, it was brought to the specific attention of the Audit and Governance Committee as part of the independent assurance role the Committee has.

Claire Dobby, Customer Resolution Manager, was welcomed to the meeting and presented the report.

Council performance (based on a total of 13 investigations for the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022) for complaints upheld was 69%, which was an improvement on last year’s position of 83%, but it was appreciated that the number of complaints received was higher. Compliance with actions received by the Ombudsman remained at 100%. Satisfactory remedy, in which the number of cases that the Ombudsman considers to be resolved and remedied satisfactorily by the Council before reaching them, remained at 0%. Additional support measures had been put in place to support remedy and resolution however it was too soon to see the impact of those measures.

In the ensuing discussion particular reference was made to the following points:

·       It was noted that the Local Authority average nationwide for satisfactory remedy was around 11%. The Ombudsman do issue remedy guidance which is used and shared with the services who are responsible for investigating complaints. Previous Ombudsman reports that may have a similar subject matter are also available online for services to access. It was hoped that with the additional support measures that have been implemented that an improvement in performance could be recorded moving forwards.

·       The Complaints Resolution team had recently been restructured with the newly formed team having additional resources in the service.

·       The Executive Director - Core Services reported that within the SMT Annual Report, it was recognised that complex complaints remained a challenge, for example Adult Social Care complaints contain a high number of stakeholders. These kinds of complaints are resource intensive and required significant work to remedy. It was noted that in terms of performance standards, the time taken to remedy complaints was good.

RESOLVED that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Annual Review Letter 2022 be noted.