Contact: Paul Carey-Kent, ext 7525

1. Background

1.1 The County Council's complaints policy requires departments to report the appropriate policy review committee on their monitoring of complaints and compliments. This report covers the period 2004/05 for County Treasurers.

1.2 These results need to be seen in the context of the department's overall strategy to ensure good communication and feedback from customers. Accordingly these themes are picked up.

2. Feedback context

2.1 The department uses both proactive and reactive means of obtaining feedback from both customers and staff. The main ones are:

· A customer Quality Review which takes place about every 2 to 3 years, and which takes the form of visiting some 100 customers to carry out a structured interview designed to find out not just `how we are doing' but also what ideas they have for improvement. The last of these took place in autumn 2004.

· A parallel process, called `Listening to You' is also undertaken periodically to find out in a similar structured way views of all staff through interviews with managers.

· Some types of work lend themselves to specific customer feedback on particular pieces of work - audit, consultancy and provision of training. Those results then feed into assessment of performance. In consultancy for example, all the projects undertaken were assessed favourably by customer feedback returned, and in audit, very poor marks are treated as a complaint (20 out of some 219 audits carried out in 2004/05). At the other end of the scale top marks in all categories were given by 23 of the 85 customers who returned appraisal questionnaires and these are treated as compliments.

· Regular surveys are carried out of external customer groups not covered by the Quality Review process. These include surveys of pensioners on the level of service, literature and letters provided, of students receiving support, and of Social Services customers who use the Financial Assessments and Benefits Service on how helpful they find our visits to be.

· The department also holds an open day approximately every two years at which customers are invited to attend talks, systems demonstrations, tours of sections to see how they work and stands set up to answer their questions. This is another helpful way of obtaining customer views as well as improving communications. The next open day will be in May 2006.

· Information from these mechanisms feeds through the department's Quality Focus Group (QFG), made up of staff from different levels across the department, who consider what can be done to improve customer service. They also receive quarterly reports on compliments and complaints, which make up the more reactive side of dealing with customer feedback.

2.2 Complaints are recognised as valuable information that helps the department to identify opportunities for improvement. Each complaint is investigated by the relevant service manager and an appropriate response made to the customer. Where a problem is revealed, consideration is given not just to rectifying action but also to system change as appropriate in order to prevent a recurrence.

2.3 It is planned to carry out a more processed-based assessment of the department's work this autumn by applying CIPFA's Financial Management Model. This is a self-assessment which builds on feedback from stakeholders to develop a profile of the strengths and weaknesses of financial management, its predominant style and how far this is designed to support the Council's strategic goals. It is a recommended complement to Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) process, and can be fed into that.

3. Complaints and compliments monitoring 2003/04

3.1 2001/02 and 2002/03 were particularly challenging years for the department in terms of customer service due to the systems changes occurring, and that was reflected in complaints reaching 200 per year. Numbers fell to 154 in 2003/04, and have fallen slightly further to 149 in 2004/05. This is encouraging in that fewer complaints occurred as systems were rolled out across the Authority as a whole than had resulted from the initial roll-out of central modules. Nonetheless, issues around roll-out training - which was generally well received, but of which some customers wanted more - were a leading theme in the feed back in the Quality Review 2004. Systems issues have also led to complaints in Student Support, where the Council piloted a national computer system in 2003/04 (60 complaints - more than in previous years) and the full roll-out of this system in 2004/05 also encountered teething problems (56 complaints - again, often relating to the new national procedures rather than local action).

3.2 Compliments are also recorded, although it is in their nature that as they do not require corrective action, they receive less attention and are less likely to be captured formally. There were 8 written compliments recorded in 2004/05 along with the 23 internal audits given top marks.

3.3 No complaints were referred to the ombudsman during the year 2004/05.

3.4 None of the complaints reported were considered to have a racial element to them.

4. Conclusions

4.1 Good systems are in place to record and investigate customer complaints, however there is always room for improvement and the relevant systems are currently being reviewed by the Treasurer's department and corporately. The opportunity is taken to learn from the complaints and where appropriate improvement actions are taken.

Recommendation

That this report is noted. That the Committee continues to receive an annual report on compliments and complaints within the County Treasurer's department.

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:

Published works.

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

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