Dear Mr Carruthers

Further to your request received by Barnet Council on Saturday 23 August.

Our complaints process does not involve councillors directly resolving complaints against Council staff. Our process is for the complaint to be received by the Council's Complaints Team, for that to be investigated by an appointed investigating officer and for the complainant to have the right to appeal by writing to our Chief Executive, Leo Boland.

In terms of complaints submitted to the Council please see table below:

Of the complaints listed above I have specified the number of complaints which were found to be justified - but again I must stress that this was not determined by the elected Councillors.

Turning to your query about the number of staff who are no longer employed by our authority as a result of a complaint. They were no staff dismissed as a result of a complaint.

Further I am not able to provide individual details of compensation agreed where a complaint was found to be justified, due to Data Protection. However, I can provide a total amount that was agreed and this shows the total agreed either in the form of a local settlement or additional formal finding of maladministration causing injustice (see table below).

Where the LGO has found maladministration the LGO's recommendations have been met in full. As to whether this amount was met from Council Tax payers.

It is fair to say that the monies would have been paid from the service budgets.

Complaints are administered as part of the Council's Customer Service Section and departmental representatives. Complaints does not have a separate budget coding but is administered as part of the overall Customer Services function.

However, we have calculated the cost of our complaints system- for complaints excluding FOI and DP is £12k per year - this is based on staff time spent administrating the process. In terms of the number of staff involved there are 2.0 full time equivalent staff working in the council and these posts all deal with complaints - but not all of their working time.

With regard to your request for information about the pay increase made to the Council's Chief Executive in pounds sterling for each of these years we would only provide the pay scale that the Chief Executive was paid, and not the detail of his wage increases.

In relation to your query about the adequacy of the complaints system - we would respond that we are satisfied with our current arrangements in terms of the computer systems and the staffing arrangements. Details of the council's Electoral Registration and Returning Officer are available via the Barnet web site www.barnet.gov.uk

Yours sincerely

Vinod Mandora

FOI & DP Officer

Corporate Governance

LB Barnet