Agenda item - Annual Review from the Local Government Ombudsman

Agenda item

Annual Review from the Local Government Ombudsman

Minutes:

[With the Committee’s agreement, item 5 on the agenda, Annual Review from the Local Government Ombudsman, was considered before item 4, Standards Regime – Monitoring Officers’ Report.]

 

The Committee considered the report on the Local Government Ombudsman’s Annual Review Letter, which set out the statistics for complaints made against the Council covering the years ending 31st March 2021 and 31st March 2022.

 

The Property Lawyer for the Council reported that the Local Government Ombudsman guidance recommended that where routine mistakes and service failures occurred on the part of the local authority, the Monitoring Officer was required to report to members, summarising the findings on upheld complaints over a specific period. It was noted that in all cases the Council had cooperated fully with Ombudsman enquiries and investigations and had agreed to implement the recommendations of the Ombudsman in relation to all upheld cases.

 

It was reported that costs resulting from upheld cases detailed in this report had been met from existing budgets and as such there was no direct financial implication to the Council resulting from the Ombudsman’s recommendations.

 

Following the presentation of the report, Members made comments and asked questions of Officers. Clarification was sought on why in some years (such as that ending 31 March 2021) there were more complaints decided than had been received, and it was explained that this was because some complaints might be received in one year but only resolved in the following year.

 

The staged process for dealing with complaints was explained to Members.  Initially, the Council would attempt to resolve the complaint internally. Failing this, the complaint would be passed to the Ombudsman who would first investigate if the Council had fully exhausted its complaints procedure. Only once this was confirmed, did the independent Ombudsman investigation of the complaint begin.

 

Members queried the fact that, contrary to what was stated during the presentation, the report indicated the Council did incur costs of £450 in relation to the Ombudsman’s findings of service failure in 3 cases detailed in the report. The Council’s Property Lawyer explained that these small payments came out of existing departmental budgets, from within internal contingency funds set aside for the eventuality of upheld complaints, rather than any corporate budget. As such there were no direct, unexpected financial implications to the Council’s budget.

 

Officers were asked whether it was of concern that for the period ending 31 March 2022, the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) upheld all three complaints against the Council it investigated, in comparison to the average of 51% for similar organisations. It was explained that given the small number of complaints against the Council the Ombudsman investigated in that year it was not of significant concern, although it was highlighted that work was currently undertaken to compile a new complaints procedure to improve the local resolution rate.

 

Members suggested that officers should include, in future iterations of the annual ombudsman review reports, a section providing a number of compliments that the Council had received, in addition to complaints.

 

It was also suggested by Members that future iterations of this report should contain a breakdown of how many total complaints were received by the Council over a given period and, out of those, how many were resolved internally and how many were brought before the Ombudsman. Members also requested that future reports should detail how much officer time was spent on dealing with the complaints. Lastly, Members asked that a comparison with other similar authorities be provided.

 

RESOLVED that the report be noted.

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