Complaints ten times higher than Manchester
Birmingham residents make more than 10 times as many complaints about council services as those in Manchester, a report states.
A report from officers to Birmingham City Council’s co-ordinating overview and scrutiny committee states complaints are “extremely high”.
It adds the current complaints process is in “crisis” and suggests an overhaul, with complaints per citizen “approximately ten times higher when compared to other authorities of a similar size”.
The report states the city council receives 0.5 complaints per citizen compared to a rate of 0.04 in Manchester, while 40 per cent more ombudsman complaints are upheld.
Birmingham is the largest local authority area in the UK according to figures from the Office for National Statistics, with an estimated population of 1.1 million.
The next largest council areas are Leeds (793,000), Glasgow (633,000), Sheffield (584,000), Cornwall (569,000) and Manchester (552,000).
The report to councillors also states the 68 per cent customer satisfaction level in Birmingham is lower than the 73.9 per cent average across the whole of the public sector.
The documents state “a lot of complaints go unrecorded and the volumes included in reporting don’t reflect the true volumes” while the cost of complaints “is not tracked or measured across the council”.
It states failings in services which cause complaints – made through channels such as the contact centre – “are not resolved, creating complaints that could have been avoided”.
The report recommends creating dedicated virtual complaints teams within each of the council’s services directorates along with a small central team to provide “one view of the data”.
The report states investment is needed to create a new system, existing business support employees could be transferred to new roles and that it could be put in place within a period of 36 weeks.
Speaking at the meeting today, deputy leader Councillor Brigid Jones said: “We don’t handle complaints well as a city. We get too many of them and we don’t deal with them well when they come in.
“If we have let you down to the point where you have to send us in a complaint, we ought to be dealing with it properly, but as this committee has always made very clear, we have to be fixing the thing you are complaining about so that future people don’t have to complain.”
Officers state the council offers more than 1,000 different types of services.
Customer service calls include topics such as adult social care, benefits, children’s services, housing repairs and options and waste management.
The council launched a Covid emergency line on March 30, with emergency support requests most commonly relating to food.
The emergency line has received 9,324 calls with answer rates of 99 per cent, and an online form has received 454 submissions.
The council has made 40,000 outbound calls since March to check on those shielding and those requiring assistance and food parcels.
The meeting also heard only 39 per cent of the council’s end-of-year targets were met in 2019/20, which was branded “appallingly low” by former council leader and committee member Councillor Sir Albert Bore.
He added he found it “difficult to believe” the 99.78 per cent figure of reported refuse and recycling collections achieved given reports of non-collections from councillors.
