Agenda item

Report to follow.

Mrs Williams-Dorn explained that her report outlined all formal complaints, FOI requests and Data Protection requests that had been received during 2020/21. A total of 103 complaints were received, which was a decrease of 17% overall compared to 2019/20. 84% of the complaints received in 2020/21 were categorised as stage 1 within the council’s formal complaints process. 10.7% were stage 2, 4.9% reached the last stage of the process via the Local Government Ombudsman. Of the total number of complaints received, 15.5% were upheld. 17.5% were partially upheld and 67% were not upheld.

She confirmed that lessons had been learnt and improvements made as a result of upheld or partially upheld complaints with clearer guidance being provided to the customer where required and officer training provided where appropriate. Of the complaints that had been sent to the Ombudsman, none were formally investigated, this compared to an average of 32% being investigated and upheld across similar authorities as outlined within the report.

It was also confirmed that the council received 177 recorded compliments across all services thanking staff for their help and assistance. Turning to Freedom of Information requests she advised that the council had received 716 requests that required an answer of which 91% had been answered within the 20-day deadline. She confirmed that the majority of these had been requested by members of the public, with 32.4% and 7% having been requested by commercial organisations and the media respectively.

She explained that under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), the council had received 13 requests from customers to access their personal information held by the council and in addition to this, 13 Police/authority requests had also been received and responded to.

Members then asked a range of questions of which have been summarised below;

• Concern raised regarding the amount of time spent by officers answering FOI requests and could this time be accurately quantified. It was explained by Mr Bennett that the vast majority of the requests were dealt with in approximately 30 minutes, however, due to the vast nature and sometimes level and range of detail required for the remainder the time was significantly longer and not something that could be quantified. He also reassured members that where improvements could be made to the councils website in terms of sign-posting users to areas of information or the content being made clearer, this was happening and the speed at which this work is completed by the Customers Services Team and the Web Team was testament to their hard work.
• A suggestion was made to consider making FOI responses from organisations and the media chargeable.
• Clarity on what records the council kept in terms of focusing on continuous improvement was sought. It was confirmed that records were kept helping identify trends so that the council can react quickly and ensure that update information is made readily available and accessible to its customers.
• It was requested and agreed that for future updates it included a list of the top 5 requests asked for.   

RESOLVED

That the Committee noted the contents of this report.