Failings Council sorry for ‘serious breach of trust’

BRISTOL City Council committed a “serious breach of trust which risks undermining public confidence” after promising but failing to improve how it handles complaints, watchdogs have ruled.

The Local Government Ombudsman has censured the organisation and says it hopes other councils around the country learn lessons from City Hall’s mistakes.

The ombudsman’s report criticised the local authority for failing to show it had completed recommendations it had agreed to undertake in two separate cases where complaints against it were upheld.

The council has apologised for “any distress and inconvenience” and accepts it has “fallen short” in both its initial handling of the complaints and its compliance with the recommendations.

In both cases, completed in early 2020 – one involving missed bin collections and the other noise nuisance – the council accepted the ombudsman’s findings that service failures had caused injustice. It promised it would put things right for those who complained and improve its services for other residents.

But the organisation failed to provide evidence it had done either and the watchdog spent months chasing it up for proof. It was only when the ombudsman opened a new investigation last November that the council finally did what it had agreed to, after the deadline.

The council has told the ombudsman it recognised it had an issue with “case handling resource problems” and carried out an independent internal investigation resulting in recommendations for improvements being made to chief executive Mike Jackson.

It says actions have been implemented in most of its cases from October 2020.

Michael King, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said: “Good complaints handling should be at the heart of any local authority’s corporate governance arrangements and oversight, but it is clear from these two cases there were significant issues in the city.

“I am pleased the council has acknowledged and identified there have been problems with its complaint handling.

“However, it should not have taken our intervention – including months of chasing, and our decision to register new complaints – to trigger this.

“This report demonstrates the efforts to which we go, to ensure councils follow through on their commitments to put things right, and how we will hold them to account if they don’t.

“I hope councils across the country will take lessons from it and ensure their own complaints arrangements meet the standards both we, and the people they serve, expect.”

A City Council spokesperson said: “We fully accept the findings of the ombudsman and recognise that we have fallen short in both our initial handling of these complaints and our compliance with the recommendations made. We apologise for any distress and inconvenience caused in these cases. An internal investigation did produce recommendations for future improvements and we are taking steps to ensure that the appropriate actions are now taken forward.”