Lead Member - Councillor Gwilym Butler - Portfolio Holder for Finance and Corporate Resources

Report of James Walton, Executive Director of Resources

RESOLVED:

To note the recommendations and actions in the Annual Customer Feedback Report designed to support and improve robust customer feedback performance. 

The Portfolio Holder for Culture and Digital introduced the annual report drawing attention to the 2702 cases of customer feedback.    

The average time taken to respond to stage 1 complaints had been challenging in the past, at 32 days, and he was pleased to report that the council’s target of 30 days had now been surpassed and was now at 26 days.  While the long-term trend was of increasing numbers of complaints received, up by 36% since 2016/17, year on year the volume of customer feedback has stabilised, showing a very slight year-to-year reduction for 2022/23.

The number of complaints progressing beyond Stage 1 through either the council’s own processes or to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) remained small at 5% of total complaints, of these, 20 (33%) were investigated and of those 16 were upheld by the Ombudsman, representing 0.01% of total complaints investigated.  The Ombudsman had recommended a meeting with Shropshire Council to discuss the annual report and the year ahead and this discussion would be helpful to develop a more robust understanding of the ombudsman’s recommendations.

The Portfolio Holder for Highways drew attention to the marked reduction in the volume of complaints about highways and transport, which now accounted for 19% of complaints down from 27% the previous year, he thanked the Highways team for the marked improvement in the way it was operating.

RESOLVED:

To note the recommendations and actions in the Annual Customer Feedback Report designed to support and improve robust customer feedback performance.