Shropshire Council complaint system is improving
Shropshire Council is improving the way it deals with its complaints to ensure customers and their concerns are dealt with promptly.
The authority's scrutiny committee heard on Wednesday that the council dealt with 1,119 complaints in the last financial year.
The number of complaints has risen by 20 per cent compared to the year 2016/17.
Mr Tom Dodd, information officer, said that about two thirds of the complaints received related to four main service areas – highways and street scene, waste/recycling, adult social care and children’s services.
He said the biggest number of complaints came during bad weather and involved problems with highways and also with waste collection affected by the weather.
Mr Dodd said while more people might be feeding back to the council, the number of complaints upheld were the same. Most were dealt with within 20 days.
"The number of upheld complaints going to the Ombudsman is dropping - from 50 to 57 per cent to 32 per cent last year which compared to the national average of 56/57 per cent," he said.
Councillor Cecilia Motley said she appreciated that bad weather would see a spike in the number of complaints about the roads and in particular potholes.
But she said that it was worrying when after complaints no action was taken which led to more complaints, both from customers and local members.
"This shows that something really needs to be done about those complaints," she said.
Councillor Alan Moseley said that just over 1,000 complaints was not a big figure compared to the size of the authority.
"There must be a lot of complaints that are not logged as official complaints," he said.
Councillors said there were many complaints on the council Facebook page that were not official complaints.
Councillors voted to recommend recognising the following:
The importance of recording all formal customer feedback.
Where additional complaints are generated as a result of policy or service changes, they should be reported to senior managers for consideration.
All staff should be supported through the complaints process as the more pressure staff are under the more likely some otherwise avoidable mistakes could be made.
Making the best use of learning from customer feedback.
Implementing the new complaints system as part of customer relationship.
