Restarting investigations
On 11 June we told you that we are restarting investigations with all councils and care providers from 29 June. Earlier this week we wrote to all link officers with further information and, where relevant, details of the open cases we have registered against your council.
If you have outstanding responses to enquiries on cases, or comments on draft decisions issued before we ceased contact, please send these to us as soon as possible after 29 June or provide a timescale for when responses are likely.
On 29 June we will start work incrementally and will try to avoid sending you large volumes of requests for information or comments.
Each letter contained the contact details of your Assistant Ombudsman. Please let them know if you are experiencing any general issues or problems with the level or nature of our contact. If you have queries about specific cases, please contact the allocated investigator directly.
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Like most organisations, we are adapting to working remotely, which is why our helpline will continue on reduced opening hours of 9am-12 noon. We would urge anyone who wants to make a new complaint to use our online complaint form, so we can keep our helpline for those in most need of help accessing our online service.
People who already have a complaint in the system should use the direct contact details of their named person
Annual Review Letters 2019/20
 Given the exceptional circumstances of recent months, we have given careful consideration to our annual review letters this year. The issuing of annual letters is another step towards restarting our normal way of working with you. We hope you find the letters, and the data we publish, a useful insight about your authority’s performance.
Key Dates
22 July:
- annual review letters issued to authorities.
29 July:
- publication of annual review letters on LGSCO website
- upload of 19/20 data to Your Council’s Performance interactive map
- publication of our Review of Local Government Complaints 2019/20 report, including spreadsheets of all authorities’ complaints data.
About this year’s statistics
This year, we have made some changes to the statistics we will provide in your letter, with the continued aim of moving away from reporting complaint volumes and focusing on the outcomes. This year’s statistics will focus on three key areas:
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Complaints upheld - We uphold complaints when we find some form of fault in an authority’s actions, including where the authority accepted fault before we investigated. The uphold rate is expressed as a percentage of the detailed investigations we complete.
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Compliance with recommendations - We recommend ways for authorities to put things right when faults have caused injustice. As you will be aware, we seek assurance that our recommendations have been complied with. The compliance rate is based on the number of complaints where we are satisfied the remedy is complete, the remedy is not complete, but we remain satisfied, and where the remedy was completed late.
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Satisfactory remedies provided by the authority - We recognise cases where an authority has taken steps to put things right before the complaint came to us. These complaints were not investigated by us; the authority upheld the complaint and we agreed with how it offered to put things right.
- Finally, we compare the three key annual statistics for your authority with similar types of authorities to work out an average level of performance. We do this for County Councils, District Councils, Metropolitan Boroughs, Unitary Councils, and London Boroughs.
While we have simplified the statistics we will include in your letter, we have taken care to ensure we provide the data you may need/want from us via the additional spreadsheets we issue to you. These spreadsheets provide a case by case breakdown of complaints we have received, decided and recorded compliance outcomes for during the year.
How they will be distributed
Annual letters will be emailed to the Chief Executive, the Council Leader and the dedicated Link Officer we have on file. In addition, we will send a copy to the chair of the scrutiny committee (or equivalent function), where we have the contact information.
Feedback
We do not have the ability to accommodate requests for further information about the data we provide. However, we always welcome general feedback so will provide you with contact details when we issue the letters.
If you have any questions or concerns about a specific complaint or investigation, please raise these with your investigator directly. If you have any general questions about our approach please contact Alan Park, our External Training and Relationship Coordinator.
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