Worcestershire council warned over complaints handling for fifth year
Authorities say delays handling complaints will add to residents’ frustrations and increase the chances of others being affected
The county council has been warned about how long it takes to deal with complaints – for the fifth year in a row.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman told Worcestershire County Council it has concerns over how it responds to investigations.
It also says delays will add to residents’ frustrations and increase the chances of others being affected by similar problems.
In a letter to council chief executive Paul Robinson, the ombudsman said: “It is concerning that for the fifth consecutive year we need to report concerns about your council’s late compliance with agreed recommendations.
“In addition to delays in implementing our recommendations, there were instances of poor-quality, incomplete, and delayed responses to our investigation enquiries.”
The ombudsman upheld 23 complaints made about Worcestershire County Council between April 1, 2023 and March 21, 2024.
In one case, the council failed to provide suitable social care support for two children for a total of 18 months.
It has since agreed to pay £1,000 to the family and review its commissioning service.
Another complaint was about the council’s failure to provide a child with education and free school meals.
The authority was told to apologise to the child’s family and pay £1,400 in recognition of the missed education and £250 for “uncertainty and distress”.
The ombudsman’s Amerdeep Somal, in her letter to the council, said: “While I welcome that the council agreed to, and implemented, the recommendations we made in 18 cases during the year, it is disappointing that in five of these cases, the recommendations were not completed within the agreed timescales.”
A spokesperson for Worcestershire County Council said: “We continue to meet with the ombudsman on a quarterly basis to improve our complaint handling process and have already seen improvements in timescales and quality of responses, which Is great news.
“It was good to see the review noted a number of our performance figures show a better performance than other authorities, including double the national average of complaints that are remedied before reaching the ombudsman.
“We value the feedback from our residents, either by formal complaints and compliments, or by comments and suggestions, as they often enable us to improve the services we deliver.
“In addition to complaints, we also receive compliments and, so far in the last year, we have received nearly 400 compliments regarding the services we deliver.”