Agenda item

-                  Customer Feedback presentation by the Head of People, Projects and Performance.

(Enclosure)

-                  Citizens Panel - Report PPP05 by the Head of People, Projects and Performance.

(Enclosure)

Customer Feedback

The Head of People, Projects & Performance, Sue Griffiths referred to customer feedback and how the Council was seeking to improve how customer feedback was handled.  She introduced Lee Sirdifield acting Customer Services Service Manager who had a key role in championing and policing customer feedback. Mrs Griffiths briefly reminded Members of the background, no overall consistent approach to complaints or compliments, no detailed guidance and no consistency across the authority. There was no ethos and the software used, Covalent was not understood by all. Complaints that overlapped services had no ownerships. Services were doing the best job but there was no common approach. 

In order to address this Customer Services was now responsible for complaints and compliments. Feedback had been looked at in detail about how services dealt with complaints/compliments and this information had been fed back to Managers with how they could improve.  Training had been undertaken and standard letter templates had been devised which did not contain bureaucratic of defensive language.  Complaints were now handled more swiftly, letters were less likely to escalate a complaint.  Clear lines of what was and wasn’t a complaint were known, and better data was collected on Covalent in order that lesson could be learnt. 

The procedure for dealing with complaints had improved and this had been based on best practice and research.  Clear definitions of complaints, compliments and comments had been defined and set timescales for dealing with them put in place.

Mrs Griffiths then spoke about how a complaint would be dealt with.

-        Stage 1 – Service Manager deals with complaint with Head of Service reviewing letters.

-        Stage 2 – Independent Head of Service to review (within 3 months of initial complaint)

-        Stage 3 – Independent Director – through review prior to Local Government Ombudsman

In relation to complaints concerning housing, in the past they had been dealt with by the Local Government Ombudsman, however since April 2013 these would now be dealt with by the Housing Ombudsman after first having gone through a Democratic Filter, this was to ensure consistency when dealing with housing complaints. The Democratic Filter would comprise of a panel of tenants taken from the tenant scrutiny panel and a local resolution would be sort wherever possible.

The changes to the procedure enabled a more independent review at an earlier stage. Management were in a position to change policies and procedures if these were found to be causing complaints.  The change at Stage 3 from an Ad Hoc Members Panel to an Independent Director helped alleviate the intimidating process that could be seen as adversarial. 

The role of Members would be to receive an annual report which would be submitted to the Scrutiny Committee and the Cabinet at the same time as the Ombudsman’s letter dealing with the complaints received about the authority.  Members would have a clear procedure that they could communicate to their residents and help them. There would be more focus on the lessons learnt and Members would have the knowledge that the authority was operating on a best practice basis.

A short discussion followed and the Chairman thanked Mrs Griffiths for a clear and concise presentation; however he felt that the annual report should go to Council as well as Scrutiny and Cabinet.

Comments were made about when the Ward Councillor could get involved, however it was stated that unless the complaint went to the Ward Councillor first then there were data protection issues and the Ward Councillor did not have a right to be involved unless the complainant had contacted them directly.

Citizens Panel update

Mrs Griffiths referred to the need to modernise engagement with the public to make it more vibrant and inclusive and the report had been brought before the Group to update them.

Mrs Griffiths introduced the Consultation and Engagement Officer, Siobhan Reilly who presented report PPP05.

Recruitment of the panel had been undertaken by a specialist organisation (SMSR) who had recruited members using a combination of telephone and face to face recruitment techniques.  Recruitment had taken place during March and April 2013 and press releases informing the public that recruitment was underway had been sent to all local papers with small articles in both the Grantham Journal and the Stamford Mercury.   Using information from the 2011 Census SMSR were given demographics on gender, age, disability and geography.  The tables within the report showed the figures that had been achieved for each category by SMSR who had managed on the whole to reflect the demographic characteristics of the area’s population.  Other demographic information was also collected on religion and belief, employment status, household composition and home ownership which would be useful at points in the future.

As part of the process applicants to the citizens’ panel were asked three taster questions. The responses to the questions showed that 92.3% were either very or fairly satisfied with their local area as a place to live (where the local area is defined as the area within 15 to 20 minutes walking distance from their home).  78.6% were very or fairly satisfied with the way the Council ran things.  The report then listed which of the Council services they used.  The figures provided a good measure of how members of the panel interacted and participated with Council services and the positive perspective that they had of the Council.

As a welcome gesture and to establish a two way dialogue with the panel a newsletter had been sent to all panel members giving them information on:

-        How the panel was going to work

-        What was coming up

-        What had been said so far (feedback on the recruitment asked questions)

-        How to contact us

A web page had been dedicated to the citizens’ panel in order for members of the panel to contact the Council and for us to contact them. 

The first topic that the citizens’ panel would look at was Customer Access, how accessible were the Council’s services, how the services were currently accessed and how they would be accessed in the future.

Members felt that the results that SMSR had received concerning the demographics were impressive; It was suggested that the cost of sending the newsletter, 58p was perhaps not cost effective.  Mrs Griffith replied that different ways of sending information were being looked at and most of the citizens’ panel had asked to be notified electronically. 

Members asked if the results of the surveys undertaken by the citizens’ panel could be shared with the PDG. Mrs Griffiths said she would be happy to feedback to Members the findings in an update.  The Chairman said he would be happy for the update to be given either in person or written and thanked both Mrs Griffiths and Ms Reilly for their presentation.