£50k paid out by Peterborough Council over complaints
Nearly £30k was paid out in response to four complaints made in relation to children’s services.
Last updated 14th May 2024
More than £50k has been paid out by Peterborough City Council (PCC) in response to complaints settled internally over the last five years.
The figure (£52,159) doesn’t include payouts ordered by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO).
In the most expensive financial year, 2022-23, £28,939 was paid out in response to four complaints made in relation to children’s services.
The largest individual payout, £11,500, was granted after a complaint about the council’s corporate services in 2019-20.
Complaints regarding the council’s services are made and recorded separately to those involving individual councillors.
Complaints can be submitted online and the council aims to respond to them within 20 working days.
Stage one of the council’s response is to have a manager involved in the relevant service area investigate the complaint and respond to the complainant.
Stage two, for those unhappy with their stage one response, involves a review of the complaint by a manager who is independent of the service area being complained about.
If the issue is still not resolved, complainants can then appeal to the LGSCO.
PCC figures suggest that around a third of complaints made against the council’s corporate services – which includes finance, bereavement services, commercial partnerships, property, assets, communications and digital services – were not met with an answer within 20 working days between 2019 and 2023.
The figures were lower in 2019/2020 and 2020/21, suggesting the impacts of the Covid pandemic may have had an effect on response time, but as of 2022/23, around a quarter of complaints are still not met with a response in this timeframe.
Most complaints were resolved at stage one of the council’s procedure (1,442 across corporate services and adults’ and children’s social care) from 2019 to 2023, while fewer than 100 were resolved at stage two (98 across the same services and time period).
The total number of complaints between 2019 and 2023 across these services was 1,661, meaning 121 were escalated to the LGSCO or handled another way (around seven per cent).
The highest number of complaints were received in 2021-22.
There were 329 about corporate services, 73 about children’s social care and 43 about adults’ social care, or 445 in total.
The data has been revealed by a Freedom of Information request.