Increase in formal complaints about county council services

The council areas most complained about included lighting, highways maintenance, waste and transport operations, a report has revealed.

But not all concerns identified by residents as “complaints” were classed as such by the county council – and issues such as highways defects, parking problems or rights of way concerns were referred to the authority’s online reporting systems.

The annual corporate complaints report, which covers the period between April 1 2023 and March 31 2024 and was presented to the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday (September 10), does not include details of complaints about children’s or adult social care services, which are covered by separate documents.

The council’s complaints manager Kate Bullivant said: “We’ve had an 8.5 per cent increase in formal complaints and that was (from) 140 to 152.

"If you think about the size of the local authority and the amount of services we provide, that’s a very good number of complaints coming in.

“A lot of people feel they are making a complaint, ie they have got a pothole, but we have to go back and respectfully tell them it’s a request for service.

"We are really grateful for people highlighting concerns about our roads and the decision has been made that we report that digitally.

“We’ve got lots of learning actions, it’s very important that we learn from the complaints that have come in.

"We ensure these are followed through with an action plan as we may not uphold the complaint but we learn from everything that comes into us.

“The final stage of the corporate complaints process is the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

"We work with the Ombudsman through all our processes and the Ombudsman produces an annual letter.

“We’ve been brought to task for not remedying recommendations in a timely manner and this is mainly with our SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) team and families.

"We’re working with them to ensure that we provide a timely response in respect of recommendations.”

Councillor Bob Spencer said: “It is worth noting that the for an organisation of this size, and the complexity of services that it delivers, the numbers of complaints are very low and we should recognise that.

"I’m not convinced some of the complaints are our problem as they relate to other agencies but some of those agencies are unable to take those complaints and so we’re an easy receptacle for them.

“As I understand it, some people’s ambition is to get to the Ombudsman.

"And so whatever we decide to do is just becoming an obstacle in their path to the Ombudsman.”

Council leader Alan White, who presented the report at Tuesday’s meeting, said: “The number of complaints we have received has increased and the source of many of those complaints is Members of Parliament.

"It is not surprising in the run-up to an election that MPs become much more active in making themselves known by saying to constituents ‘don’t worry it, I’ll complain on your behalf’

“The ideal for this would be to cut out the person in the middle and encourage residents to come straight to the council to try and get a resolution.

"But, for reasons everyone round the table who is an elected member will understand, they feel the benefit of representing their constituents.

“When we see next year’s report we will just see more and more of this and we’re seeing MPs become much more locally-orientated.

"I would encourage MPs to say to their constituents get in touch with your local councillor as this can be resolved pretty quickly at a lower level.

“The idea you can bypass the system by doing a complaint to the MP is something I suppose is a seductive notion for an MP.

"But actually it doesn’t particularly help the system to deal with complaints in an expedient fashion.

“There are some particularly difficult cases we have to deal with.

"And we are able to resolve many of them in a timely and very professional fashion, despite the fact that some of the complainants get particularly unprofessional and irate in the process of presenting their complaints, sometimes in an ill-advised fashion.”

MP enquiries to the council went up by 23.6% to 1,021 for the year, the committee was told.

Councillor John Francis said: “They should refer it to us so we can try and sort the problem out.

“The problem is, when an MP comes directly to this council they bypass the councillor who can probably sort it out much quicker and better.

"It creates quite a significant time lag, then we as a council get pilloried for it.

“Should we get all the MPs from Staffordshire in the chamber and tell them how things work? We’ve got a load of newbies at the minute.”

But Councillor White said: “I meet with the MPs every two months. They’re very busy people and the idea we could get all of them in the same place at the same time I don’t think is realistic.”