Agenda item

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO), and the Housing Ombudsman (HO), in February 2024 published new Complaints Handling Codes for the management of complaints that must be followed by all English local authorities and social housing providers respectively.

Attached at Appendix 1 is the Authority’s amended Corporate Complaints Procedure which reflects the necessary changes that need to be made as a result of the LGSCO and HO’s reviews referred to above. The Authority’s Complaints Procedure will become known as the ‘Corporate and Housing Services Complaints Procedure’.  

If agreed by Cabinet, the Authority’s Corporate and Housing Services Complaints Procedure will come into effect on 1 April 2024 and will apply to all non-statutory complaints that the Authority receives.

Councillor Johnson advised that as he has just updated Cabinet about some of the positive work from the customer service programme – showing how we’re investing more and more into listening and learning from what our residents tell us.

Acting on resident’s complaints has been a big part of this work and I know the officer team, continue to listen, and learn from every complaint they receive.

In November last year, Cabinet were advised about the Housing and Local Government Ombudsman’s consultation on a new joint code of practice.  Cabinet asked that Councillor Johnson come back, once the consultation had finished and the new code was published, setting out any changes the council needed to make.

On 8 February, it was announced that there would be two separate codes, one for each Ombudsman. Whilst separate, the Codes include similar advice and guidance about how to deliver a fair and effective complaints process for our residents.  The two codes are however very similar, but the Housing Ombudsman requires all changes to be in place from April this year.

Councillor Johnson was therefore pleased to be able to present the new Corporate and Housing Services Complaint Procedure to Cabinet tonight.

He advised that there were changes to the number of complaints stages our residents need to use, reducing from a Three Stage complaint process to a Two Stage Process. 

The Two Stage process has reduced timeframes for responding to complaints with an early and local resolution encouraged to resolve the complaint and prevent the delay for residents who wish to access the Ombudsman. From the date of acknowledgement Stage One being completed within 10 working days and Stage Two 20 working days.

Annual complaints reports will be presented, detailing performance and service improvement for all corporate and housing service complaints. These will be shared annually with the appropriate bodies within the Authority, including Cabinet.

Finally, I’m committed to learning from all customer feedback, including complaints, and I’m grateful to every resident, partner and visitor, who takes the time to share their experiences with us.

Cabinet RESOLVED that 1) the Corporate and Housing Services Complaints Procedure be agreed; 2) the Director for Housing and Property Services should bring a further report to Cabinet dealing with the Authority’s Housing and Property services complaint’s performance and service improvement, including the annual self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, no later than 30 June 2024; 3) the Assistant Chief Executive should bring a further report to Cabinet dealing with the Authority’s corporate complaint’s performance and service improvement, including the annual self-assessment against the Local Government Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, no later than November 2024; 4) the Assistant Chief Executive, Director of Housing and Property Services and the Director of Resources, review complaint monitoring, reporting and feedback arrangements, to ensure relevant bodies receive appropriate information about complaint activity and compliance, and report progress of this work in the annual complaint’s performance and service improvement reports to Cabinet in 2024 and successive years; and 5) the Assistant Chief Executive and the Director of Housing and Property in consultation with the Deputy Mayor, the Cabinet Member for Housing and the Director of Resources shall be authorised to make amendments or adjustments to the Corporate and Housing Services Complaints Procedure.

(Reason for the Decision:  The standards set out in the Corporate Complaint and Housing Service Procedure at Appendix 1 and the complaints processes set out therein, are based on those included in the two new Codes of Practice for complaint handling, published by the LGSCO and HO on 8 February 2024.  This followed a national joint consultation held by both Ombudsman from September 2023 to November 2024. Both Ombudsman have stated their intent was to introduce gold standard complaint handling procedure across the local government and the social housing sector.)