Wrexham Council reports drop in number of complaints

Wrexham's Customers, Performance, Resources and Governance Scrutiny Committee heard that formal complaints had dropped from 237 in 2019/20 to 151 in 2020/21, while informal complaints had fallen from 479 to 326 respectively.

There was also a fall in the number of complaints upheld or partially upheld over the same period, going from 57 per cent down to 42 per cent.

Councillors sitting on this committee heard that this was all against a backdrop of having to deal with the challenges of a pandemic, where a number of council services could not be delivered.

The council's complaints team investigated 151 formal complaints, responding to 64 per cent of these within the timescales set out.

The number of compliments received had also increased, going up from 157 to 181.

Compliments

Amongst the compliments given was the following feedback given to the environment department.

"Please can you give a big thank you to the street cleaning gang who take away the rubbish we collect (Wrexham litter pickers) in a very pleasant and efficient way. Nothing is too much trouble for them."

Meanwhile, the compliment below - received by adult social care - was also shared with the committee.

“I honestly can’t thank you enough for everything you have done for us. It's been many many years since I have woke up smiling and looking forward to the day. I’ve prayed for I don’t know how long that I don’t wake up to face another day, and that’s the truth. I feel that I’ve been given a second chance at life. Thank you very much for your part in making that happen, and please pass on my sincere thanks to the doctor who got the ball rolling in the first place. I haven’t forgotten him in all this and owe him many thanks. Thank you to everyone who has made this happen, you’ve changed my whole life, honestly thank you very much.”

Continuous improvement

Cllr Dana Davies spoke at the scrutiny committee meeting about the importance of continuous service improvement and enquired as to how Wrexham Council had performed in comparison to other Welsh local authorities when it came to the level of complaints.

She also requested that the committee receive updates on any lessons learnt through the complaints process, in order to try to tackle any recurring issues and stop complaints from happening in the first place.

Ombudsman

Wrexham Council's complaints lead Gareth Jones said that the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, Nick Bennett had started collecting comparison data in 2020, with figures submitted by all councils on a quarterly basis.

These figures will be shared later this year, with a report going to the council's executive board in September.

The committee, chaired by Cllr Carrie Harper (pictured above), approved a recommendation that future reports to the committee should focus on pre-emptive work to identify and prevent any recurring complaints.

This information would be used to drive action plans and monitoring of the work of council departments.

A report heard by the committee, and produced by the lead member for organisation - planning and corporate service, Cllr David Kelly, set out the number of informal and formal complaints made to each council department.

Formal complaints 

The environment and technical and housing and economy departments had the highest level of formal complaints, at 62 and 58 respectively, with waste collection accounting for 37 complaints. Of these 37, 31 were upheld or partially upheld.

There were six formal complaints made against finance and IT and five against governance and customer, with none upheld for either department.

Meanwhile, 54 formal complaints were made against housing and economy, with 33 per cent upheld or partially upheld.

Planning and regulatory received 19 formal complaints, with only one upheld or partially upheld.

In social care, two complaints were received about adult social care via the council's own complaints system, both of which were partially upheld and action taken to address any shortcomings identified.

The vast majority of complaints in this area have to go through the statutory social services complaints procedure.

Informal complaints

In terms of informal complaints, the majority (240) were made to the environment and technical department, and of these, 192 were in relation to waste collection, and 28 in relation to highway maintenance.

Housing and economy received 50 informal complaints, with 27 of these in relation to repairs.

The governance and customer department received 11 informal complaints, with finance and ICT and planning and regulatory getting nine each and social care getting five.