Complain to the council

The person or office responsible for the service you are dissatisfied with is in the best position to put things right quickly.

These can be used to log your complaint or compliment directly with the service:

• Adult social care services complaints
• Councillor complaints
• Children and young people's service complaints
• Families and carers of children and young people complaints
• Homes and Neighbourhoods complaints and compliments
• Schools complaints
• Taxi, private hire vehicle or driver complaints

Many council decisions are described in law and/or in council policy. This ensures the council is as consistent as possible with the way it considers requests for service and that public money is spent appropriately.

When we review a complaint, we look at how we should have done things in accordance with the law and/or procedures, and compare that against how we actually dealt with the issue you raised. We might find fault if there is a difference between the two.

If we find a fault, we then look at what the impact of the fault was to see whether your situation would be different if we had dealt with the matter in accordance with legislation and procedures. If there is an impact to you then we will look to see how we can address this impact. We will also look to learn from the complaint and consider whether we should do things differently in future.

As a public funded organisation, the council does not offer large sums of financial compensation to resolve a complaint. We therefore, usually look to see if we can restore you to be in the position you would be in as if the complaint had not occurred.

When your complaint is considered, officers must always consider government legislation and council policy - if the service has followed these procedures then it is unlikely any complaint can be upheld or that you will get a different response by making a complaint.

We recognise that our staff act on behalf of the council and so we will not respond to personal comments against individual staff.

We recognise that some complainants may make use of Artificial Intelligence tools to assist in producing their complaints. While that can be helpful, complaints produced in this way may sometimes be overly detailed, may contain incorrect reference to legislation, or lack clear explanation about how the point raised links to the specific circumstances of the complaint being made.

We may ask complainants to clarify their complaint and explain the outcome they are seeking so we can better understand the concern and be able to respond to it.

There are two stages to our complaints procedure but we hope that most problems can be resolved quickly at the first stage.

The council complaints process is a free service for individual complainants, but we have to ensure we offer value for money. We also don't want to make the process unduly difficult for residents to use.

Occasionally we may decide to progress a complaint more quickly through the complaints process meaning one of the stages are missed. There are a number of reasons why this may happen:

• If it is immediately obvious your complaint should be considered by a Senior Manager (where the complaint may start at stage 2)
• If it is clear the situation has not been caused by a council error and fault is unlikely to be found stage 2 and 3 of the process may be merged. An example would be where it is clear the council has followed the appropriate legislation

There will also be rare occasions where the council will conclude at an early point that a full complaints investigation is unnecessary. This is most likely where it appears that a full investigation is unlikely to give us any more information about the situation or provide you with the outcome you are seeking. In this instance, you will still receive a full reply from us which explains the situation.

We must ensure that complaints are handled by the most appropriate route, and that we do not deny anyone access to redress. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) provides recommended exclusions and expects councils not to apply blanket bans and to consider each case on its merits, taking account of equality impacts. Where we do not accept a complaint under this policy we will explain the reason in writing and signpost to the correct route (including the Ombudsman).

Subject to individual circumstances, exclusions include:

• Matters with a statutory appeal or review route that are not normally investigated under the corporate complaints process, such as:
  • Planning decisions for applicants (with rights via the Planning Inspectorate or judicial review).
  • Housing Benefit/Council Tax decisions and certain parking or enforcement notices.
  • Homelessness decisions and Fixed Penalty Notices.
• Where legal proceedings have started (for example, a claim has been filed at court), or the issue is more appropriately considered in law (including insured loss/compensation claims).
• Complaints about councillor conduct, which follow the Member Code of Conduct arrangements via the Monitoring Officer and Independent Person.
• Matters already considered under this policy (including repeated or duplicate complaints), unless there is new and material information.
• Out of time complaints raised more than 12 months after the person became aware of the issue, unless there are good reasons to accept them (for example, vulnerability, complexity, or safeguarding).
• Service requests (first time reports of a fault)
• Freedom of Information, Environmental Information Regulations, or Subject Access Requests, which have their own statutory processes.
• Schools (where the governing body is responsible for complaints) and certain partner/provider services that have their own complaint procedures.
• Anonymous complaints. We may record and consider the information, but cannot normally progress as a complaint unless there is a clear public interest (for example, safeguarding).

Important

Even where an exclusion applies, we will signpost you to the appropriate route and explain why your issue is not being considered under this policy.

Ownership and oversight

The appropriate Cabinet Member and the Senior Responsible Officer provide executive oversight; the Corporate Customer Standards Officer leads the policy, training and quality assurance.

Monitoring and reporting

We will track performance against standard key performance indicators (acknowledgement times, response times, uphold rates, learning actions) and publish regular reports and an annual summary.

Self-assessment

We will complete and publish a self-assessment against theComplaint Handling Code and continuously improve our approach.

Continuous learning

Services must record and implement agreed actions arising from complaints to prevent recurrence.

Elected members play an invaluable role in complaints handling as they can work as a link between officers and the resident who has lost faith in the service provided.

The main role of elected members is to enable the complainant to effectively progress their complaint by explaining the options and to support the resident if necessary. However, it is not the Member's role to become involved with the physical decision-making by the council, nor to seek to influence the outcome of a complaints decision, or to set out how the complaint should be considered under the procedure.