Council failing to resolve complaints over services

Authority receives ten times as many gripes as Manchester

BIRMINGHAM residents make more than ten times as many complaints about council services as those in Manchester, a report has revealed.

Officers told councillors that the current complaints process was in “crisis” and needed a major overhaul.

The 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.

The report to the co-ordinating overview and scrutiny committee also revealed a 68 per cent customer satisfaction level in Birmingham was lower than the 73.9 per cent average across the whole public sector.

Councillors were told: “A lot of complaints go unrecorded and the volumes included in reporting don’t reflect the true volumes.”

Meanwhile, the cost of complaints “is not tracked or measured across the council”.

Failings in services which cause complaints “are not resolved, creating complaints that could have been avoided”.

The report recommends creating dedicated ‘virtual’ complaints teams within each of the service directorates along with a small central team to provide data.

Investment is needed to create a new system and existing business support employees could be transferred to new roles. All of this could be put in place within 36 weeks, said the report.

Deputy leader Cllr Brigid Jones (Lab) 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 people down to the point where they 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 they are complaining about so that future people don’t have to complain.” Customer complaints include issues around adult social care, benefits, children’s services, housing repairs and waste management. Meanwhile, 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 Cllr Sir Albert Bore (Lab).

He added that 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. The council also 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.