Hampshire County Council Environment Policy Review Committee 23 June 2005 Annual Report on Compliments and Complaints Monitoring Report of the Director of Environment

Item 13

Contact: Mark Braggins, ext 7103 email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 This report discusses complaints and compliments recorded for the Environment Department during the period April 2004 to March 2005 and follows on from the Annual Report covering the period April 2003 to March 2004 which was presented to the Committee in June 2004.

1.2 As part of the Environment Department's programme of continuous improvement this year, the report also summarises other types of contact with the public, as recorded in the Highways Public Enquiry Manager (PEM) contact management system.

2. Corporate Strategy

2.1 This report supports Aim 5 (Improving Services) of the Corporate Strategy through analysis of complaints, compliments and feedback, and continued improvement with the way they are handled by the Environment Department.

3. Definition of Complaint

3.1 The Environment Department defines a complaint as "Any letter, telephone call, personal representation made to the Department regarding a failure in its services and functions".

4. Complaints Monitoring

4.1 Members of the public contact the Environment Department in a variety of ways including:

In Person	Information Centres
	Environment Reception
	Face-to-face (with Councillor, management or staff)
	Chief Executive/Other Department

By Telephone	Highways 0845 8504422
	Reception
	Information Centres
	Individual Staff
	Chief Executive/Other Department
By Email	Individual staff
	Reception
	Information Centres Comments and Suggestions
	Chief Executive/Other Department
By Letter	Environment Department Office Services
	Local (primarily Highway) Offices
	Chief Executive/Other Department
Via Online Forms	Information Centres
	Forms on the Environment Department Website

4.2 The Environment Department records and monitors complaints about the services it provides. All `genuine complaints' (as opposed to contacts reporting highway `defects') are identified in a Complaints Reporting Database developed within the Environment Department. Relevant data is extracted from the PEM system; complaints or compliments received from other sources are logged into the Complaints Database by Business Support.

4.3 Information is categorised in the database to enable increasingly meaningful and useful information to be produced about the nature of complaints; their cause and resolution; time to resolve, etc.

4.4 Reports¹ are produced and reviewed weekly by the Complaints Manager. The review frequency has been increased from monthly in previous years and includes:

(i) complaints summarised by section name;

(ii) complaints summarised by type;

(iii) all complaints not yet marked as `complete'; and

(iv) complaints open over 20 (calendar²) days. Any complaints not meeting guidelines for resolution are escalated appropriately.

5. Complaints Received

5.1 The total number of complaints recorded for the year 1 April 2004 to 31 March 2005 was 234, a decrease on the number recorded during the same period in 2003-04 (275) but more than recorded in 2002-03 (172).

5.2 Although 234 were originally recorded as complaints, 23 were subsequently determined to be defects. To assist analysis these have been deducted from the total, leaving 211, which are categorised as follows:

Complaints from 1 April 2004 to 31 March 2005

Category	Number
Attitude of Staff	38
Equality Issues	2
Health and Safety	44
Level of Service	96
Poor Communication	21
Response Time	10
Grand Total	211

5.3 There were 144 complaints (approximately 68%) recorded by Highways staff (including Street Lighting) using the PEM system, almost half of which related to levels of service. Other sections with significant customer contact include Waste Services which received 23 complaints, 19 of which related to perceived attitude of staff. Appendix 1 shows a summary of complaints by Section Name.

5.4 Each complaint is investigated, and a response made to the complainant. Where the complaint reveals a problem, action is taken not only to rectify the specific problem, but also to look at trends which may require other changes to prevent a reoccurrence.

6. Complaints versus Other Communications

6.1 To put the 211 complaints in perspective, the total number of communications recorded last year in the PEM system was 57,409. The source of contact is represented graphically below³.

6.2 It is interesting to note that a significant proportion (6%) of enquiries now originate from Web forms. Significant progress has been made by sections such as Highways in conjunction with IT Client to enable customers to use web forms should they wish to do so. This is of course a deliverable of e-government. By end of March 2005 almost 500 enquiries a month were being made using the web, compared to 20 a month at the end of March 2004. These are enquiries that would otherwise have been recorded on the system by local office staff. A breakdown of these enquiries is shown in Appendix 3.

6.3 It is not yet possible to record complaints and compliments on web forms that feed directly into the PEM system, and to do so will require work from IT Services. This has already been requested via IT Client.

7. Closure of Complaints

7.1 The statement on Hampshire County Council's corporate web site regarding response times is "We will send you an acknowledgement within five working days of receiving your communication and tell you who will be dealing with it and how long it will take to send you a full reply. We try to respond quickly and reply within 20 working days."

7.2 Statistics for the Environment Department for 2004-05 show that there were 21 complaints still open after 20 calendar days. A check is performed weekly, and all complaints that have not been marked as completed within 20 calendar days are followed up with the staff dealing with the complaint. The majority of these complaints had actually been resolved within the corporate guidelines of 20 working days, but had not been marked as closed in the database.

8. Complaints to the Ombudsman

8.1 A total of nine complaints relating to the Environment Department were received by the Ombudsman between 2004 and 2005; the Ombudsman decided that only one of these required further investigation. This is currently being dealt with by the Chief Executive's Department and staff in individual Environment Department sections.

9. Compliments

9.1 Compliments are also recorded and during the year 165 were received about the Department's services - see Appendix 4. Unlike the number of complaints recorded, the number of compliments received has been very consistent with the previous two years (165 in 2003-04 and 166 in 2002-03). The consistency of the volume of compliments suggests that all sections were already recording compliments and making them known to Business Support which collates the information.

10. The Way Forward

10.1 It is felt that more can be done to improve follow-up with members of the public who contact the Environment Department, and to better understand how they feel that individual complaints are being handled, rather than concentrating on process as at present. There may also be an opportunity to gather equalities data and investigate the circumstances leading up to the complaint, which can help inform future service and efficiency improvements.

10.2 The PEM system is an excellent source of data regarding customer contacts, and resource will be invested to take full advantage of the potential for improving customer relations across the whole department. Issues regarding consistency of input into the system are still a concern and will continue to be investigated.

10.3 Business Support will work closely with the Performance Team and other sections during the next period to identify specific actions to improve the service, and will also carry out an Equalities Impact Assessment for this process.

10.4 It is planned to merge the procedures for managing the correspondence register and complaints (in line with corporate guidelines).

10.5 Implement web-based forms to enable all staff to record complaints on-line. This is an outstanding request from last year and will continue to be pursued within the overall ICT work programme.

10.6 Complaints regarding attitude of staff and the extent to which the Department adheres to corporate standards was tested during a mystery shopping exercise which took place during May 2005. Results from this exercise will be available at the end of June 2005.

Recommendation

That this report be noted.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background papers
The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has 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		LOCATION
Complaints and Compliments Reporting System		Environment Department Electronic database
Public Enquiry Manager (PEM)		Electronic Database

370/MB

APPENDIX 1

Complaints by Section Between 01/04/2004 and 31/03/2005

County Highways Laboratory

Attitude of Staff 1

Section Total 1

Departmental Management Team* (DMT member involved in escalation)

Level of Service 1

Poor Communication 1

Section Total 2

Engineering Consultancy

Level of Service 1

Poor Communication 1

Response Time 1

Section Total 3

Highways East

Attitude of Staff 1

Health and Safety 7

Level of Service 14

Poor Communication 2

Response Time 1

Section Total 25

Highways Headquarters

Attitude of Staff 1

Health and Safety 3

Level of Service 4

Poor Communication 1

Response Time 1

Section Total 10

Highways North

Attitude of Staff 7

Equality Issues 2

Health and Safety 15

Level of Service 26

Poor Communication 3

Response Time 1

Section Total 54

Highways South

Attitude of Staff 6

Health and Safety 4

Level of Service 12

Poor Communication 1

Response Time 1

Section Total 24

Highways West

Attitude of Staff 2

Health and Safety 9

Level of Service 8

Poor Communication 3

Response Time 1

Section Total 23

Minerals and Waste Planning

Level of Service 2

Poor Communication 1

Section Total 3

Passenger Transport

Attitude of Staff 1

Level of Service 3

Section Total 4

SHRT

Level of Service 1

Section Total 1

Street Lighting

Health and Safety 3

Level of Service 4

Poor Communication 1

Section Total 8

Traffic Management and Road Safety

Health and Safety 2

Level of Service 9

Poor Communication 3

Response Time 1

Section Total 15

Transport Implementation

Health and Safety 1

Level of Service 3

Poor Communication 1

Section Total 5

Transport Policy

Level of Service 3

Poor Communication 1

Section Total 4

UNSPECIFIED

Level of Service 1

Poor Communication 2

Response Time 3

Section Total 6

Waste Services

Attitude of Staff 19

Level of Service 4

Section Total 23

Total all Sections 211

APPENDIX 2

APPENDIX 3

Key: HHHQ - Hampshire Highways Headquarters TM - Traffic Management HUE - Highways Unit East HUN - Highways Unit North HUS - Highways Unit South HUW - Highways Unit West

APPENDIX 4

Compliments by Section between 01/04/2004 and 31/03/2005

Departmental Management Team

Quality/speed of service 1

Total 1

Engineering Consultancy

Helpfulness of staff, etc 3

Quality/speed of service 6

Total 9

Environmental Performance

Helpfulness of staff, etc 1

Total 1

Highways East

Helpfulness of staff, etc 3

Quality/speed of service 29

Total 32

Highways Headquarters

Helpfulness of staff, etc 1

Quality/speed of service 5

Total 6

Highways North

Helpfulness of staff, etc 10

Quality/speed of service 23

Total 33

Highways South

Helpfulness of staff, etc 7

Quality/speed of service 26

Total 33

Highways West

Helpfulness of staff, etc 4

Quality/speed of service 17

Total 21

Intelligent Transport Systems

Helpfulness of staff, etc 1

Total 1

Landscape Planning and Heritage

Quality/speed of service 1

Total 1

Passenger Transport

Helpfulness of staff, etc 2

Quality/speed of service 2

Total 4

Spatial Strategy

Helpfulness of staff, etc 1

Total 1

Street Lighting

Quality/speed of service 1

Total 1

Traffic Management and Road Safety

Helpfulness of staff, etc 4

Quality/speed of service 4

Total 8

Transport Policy

Helpfulness of staff, etc 4

Quality/speed of service 2

Total 6

UNSPECIFIED

Helpfulness of staff, etc 2

Quality/speed of service 3

Total 5

Waste Services

Helpfulness of staff, etc 1

Quality/speed of service 1

Total 2

Total All Sections 165