Contact: Sue Pappadakis, 01962 846572; [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 This report summarises complaints made by parents, members of the public or schools (headteachers or governors) about services delivered by the Education Department during the financial year 2003/04. This is the second year the department has reported to the Education Policy Review Committee

1.2 This report also summarises compliments that have been logged by services.

2 Background

2.1 All Hampshire County Council departments now report annually on the complaints and compliments received over the financial year. These reports are presented to departmental management teams and policy review committees. A summary of all departmental reports is presented to the County Council's Standards Committee.

2.2 Departments also required to provide a breakdown of these complaints by reason, outcome for the service, equalities information (where possible) and where they have been escalated to chief officer and chief executive level. Complaints received by the local government ombudsman are also summarised.

2.3 The Race Relations (Amendment) Act places a positive duty on local authorities to promote good race relations and other equal opportunities. The Best Value Performance Indicators (174/175) ask local authorities to report on the numbers of racial complaints/incidents and provide an audit trail describing the action taken and the resulting outcomes.

2.4 All reports include a summary of compliments. Greater diligence in recording these was requested by Members when the Committee received the 2002/03 report.

3 Education Department Complaints 2003/2004

3.1 108 complaints were logged for this financial year: 37 were from parents or members of the public and 71 from schools. This is comparable to 2002/03 when there were 89 complaints: 28 from parents or the public and 61 from schools.

3.2 The vast majority of complaints have been recorded as being satisfactorily dealt with at Stage 1 of the corporate complaints procedure.

3.3 82% of complaints were responded to within the procedures timescale of 20 working days which is on a par with 85% in 2002/03. Delays were mostly due to the involvement of outside contractors.

3.4 Equalities information remains limited as complaints are mostly received and resolved at the first stage of our complaints process, without using formal complaints forms, and the associated requirement to ask for equalities information. Information on equalities is not required from schools.

3.5 Six complaints were considered by the local government ombudsman (LGO) compared with two in 2003/03. Of these, two were determined as `premature' and referred back to the County Council, two were determined at the ombudsman's discretion (investigation discontinued) and two were settled locally.

4 Service complaints

4.1 The following table shows the number of complaints received by each service within the last three years. Compliments are included in brackets.

	2003/04	2002/03	2001/02
School Improvement Service	1	2	0
Governor Services	26 (57)	8	24
Special Educational Needs (SEN) Services	3 (21)	4	5
Educational Psychology Service (EPS)	0	4	0
Education Welfare Service (EWS)	17 (23)	5	27
Education Other Than At School (EOTAS)	9	1	0
Family Group Conference (FGC)	0 (1)	0 (1)	1 (22)
Admissions	5	0	1
Youth Service	7	7	15
Music Service	2 (25)	9 (27)	9
Early Years and Childcare	4	0	1
Adult and Community Learning Sub Total for education services	1	3	0
	75 (127)	43 (28)	83 (22)
Information and Research	0 (1)
Information and Communication Technology	33	46 (1)	76 (9)
Financial Services to schools	0 (66)	0	0
Sub Total for information and technical support services	33 (67)	46 (1)	76 (9)
Totals	108 (194)	89 (29)	159 (31)

4.2 A breakdown by reasons for complaints about a service show:

48% Service quality
16% Delay in delivery
7% Gap in provision
6% Staff attitude
5% Payment issues
6% Disagree with HCC/LEA policy decision
4% Communication
3% Health and safety
3% Misleading advice
2% Ethnicity.

The wide variety of reasons shown as compared with 2002/03 reflects the department's increasing understanding of the value of recording, and the importance of analysing, the information provided from complaints.

4.3 Whilst about 50% of these complaints were resolved with a clarification or explanation, other resulting action included:

Reviewed service staff practices (22%)
Administrative errors rectified (14%)
Price reduction/reimbursement/compensation (7%)
Revised guidance (3%)
Ongoing at the point of reporting. (4%)

5 Complaints about racial issues

5.1 Two complaints relating to ethnicity were recorded by the department and the audit trails outlining action taken have been submitted to the appropriate corporate officer. Both these complaints were satisfactorily resolved indicating that staff dealt with these issues sensitively and effectively.

5.2 There will be further training within the department to help staff recognise issues that might be related to ethnicity and other equality matters. This will be based on corporate guidance and training and be delivered through branch management teams.

6 Compliments

6.1 Following the first report to PRC, in June 2003, Members requested that the department be more diligent in its recording of compliments in the future as they believed that the 29 compliments logged for that year did not reflect the true picture. Staff were reminded of this and in 2003/04 recorded 194 compliments in total, received either by letter, email or specifically made verbally.

7 Processes in the Education Department

7.1 The Education Department has improved its processes for the logging of complaints and compliments throughout the financial year 2003/04. The analysis of information from complaints is improving. Both the processes and the analysis will be strengthened further during 2004/5.

8 Legal Implications

None

9 Financial Implications

None

10 Personnel implications

None

11 Impact assessment for equalities

In line with the corporate processes, the Education Department is monitoring complaints for equalities where they are part of the formal complaints procedure. Paragraph 5 gives further details of the two complaints received by the department relating to ethnicity.

12 Crime prevention issues

None

13 Views of local County Councillors

Not sought in the drafting of this report.

14 Conclusion

14.1 The number of complaints received by the department has remained relatively stable.

14.2 The number of compliments logged and reported on has increased.

14.3 The Education Department has incorporated the system for monitoring complaints into its every day practices and is increasingly able to analyse this information for service quality review

14.4 There has been an improved awareness of complaints related to ethnicity.

Recommendations

1 That this report is noted.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

Title File

Comments, suggestions and complaints - Hampshire County Council's complaints procedure (Factsheet 4)