Purpose

Report highlighting Council complaints
performance in 2024/5 including Annual reporting from Local
Government and Social Care and Housing Ombudsman.

Decision

(i) 
To receive and review complaints outcomes and service based
learning arising from the annual complaints reports 2024/5
(ii) 
To approve the updated Complaints Policy (Corporate & Adult
Social Care) (Appendix 1) to reflect changes required by the
Housing Regulator and Ombudsman to comply with their new Codes of
Practice

Reasons for the decision

It is a requirement of the Ombudsman’s
respective Complaints Handling Codes (and good practice) for
elected members to receive an annual report on the Council’s
complaints service, performance monitoring against previous years
and national comparators and to keep our complaints policy updated
to comply with any Regulator / Ombudsman Codes of Practice. The
report also provides a valuable insight as to where service
failures have occurred and not been recovered as part of business
as usual service delivery and where the Council can use learning
from complaints to improve future service performance and outcomes
for our residents and other service users.

Alternative options considered

N/A – It is a requirement of the
Complaints Handling Codes to provide Members with an annual
performance report in relation to complaints . In addition, the
Council would not be compliant with the Codes if it failed to
update its Complaints policy in line with the recommendations made
by the Housing Ombudsman.