Agenda item

Consider report by Service Director Customer & Communities.  (Copy attached).

7.1       With reference to paragraph 3 of the Minute of the Executive Committee held on 4 September 2018, there had been circulated copies of a report by the Service Director Customer & Communities which presented a summary of Scottish Borders Council’s

Complaints Annual Performance Report 2018-19 contained in Appendix 1 to the report.  This set out how many complaints had been received, how effectively complaints had been dealt with, trends over time and how Scottish Borders Council (SBC) compared to other similar rural Local Authorities and the national average.  It also provided a summary of the eight performance indicators that the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) required all Local Authorities to report against each year.  The Annual Report was a requirement of all Councils and allowed the SPSO to assess the effectiveness of Councils’ Complaint Handling Procedures (CHP).  It also ensured an ongoing focus on improving the way complaints were handled and ensured that Councils learned from the complaints received.  Councils could also learn from best practice through a network of complaint handling practitioners, the Local Authority Complaints Handling Network (LACHN).  The report explained that during 2018/19, SBC received 826 complaints, of which 625 were defined as valid.  Scottish Borders Council continued to perform well against the Scottish average and similar Scottish Local Authorities in relation to the 8 SPSO performance indicators.  Resolving more complaints at the frontline would continue to remain a priority.

7.2       In presenting the report the Service Director Customer & Communities advised that complaints made to SBC about its services accounted for a very small proportion of all the customer interactions recorded in the Council’s Relationship Management System in 2018/19 (0.5%, or 896 out of 173,133 interactions).  There had been a 3.3% decrease in all complaints received (Valid or Invalid) compared to 2017/18 (927).  The year 2018/19 again saw an increase in the number of complaints received online (429, compared to 411 in 2017/18) but between 2017/18 and 2018/19 there had been a 4.3% increase over the previous year (22% increase from 2016/17 to 2017/18).  It was noted that fewer complaints were received in 2018/19 compared to 2017/18 and the number that were classified as ‘valid’ decreased; 625 valid compared to 670 in the previous year.  The proportion of ‘invalid’ complaints for 2018/19 increased to 30% from 28% in 2017/18 which indicated that customers, in some instances, had unintentionally submitted complaints rather than requests for service.  In 2018/19 the SPSO received 11 complaints about Scottish Borders Council and this was equal to 0.8% of all complaints received by the SPSO in relation to the Local Authority sector.  Of the 24 SPSO closed complaints in 2018/19, only 1 was upheld or partially upheld compared to 5 in 2017/18, the details of which were presented within Appendix 1 to the report.  Ms Craig confirmed that Live Borders had a Complaints Handling Procedure that aligned with Scottish Borders Council’s procedure and a summary of their performance was included in Appendix 1 to the report as well as Live Borders learning process from complaints.  Members were pleased to see the improvements within the report.  It was noted that the reporting of complaints from Health and Social Care clients needed to be reviewed as they could be submitted to either SBC or the NHS.

DECISION

AGREED to:-

(a)     note the performance of handling complaints for the period 1 April 2018 to 31March 2019;

(b)     endorse the identified improvement actions presented at Section 4.9 of this report and within the “Next Steps” of the Appendix 1; and

(c)     approve the annual report at the Appendix 1, that would now be submitted to the SPSO and published on SBC’s website.