21 June 2006

Stephen Evans

Democratic Services Manager

London Borough of Havering

Town Hall

ROMFORD

RM1 3BD

Our ref: TR/annual letter/PW

(Please quote our reference when contacting us)

If telephoning contact: Richard Shaw on 020 7217 4669

email address: [email address]

Dear Mr Evans

Annual Letter 2005/06

I am writing to give you my reflections on the complaints received against your authority and dealt with by my office over the last year. I hope that in reviewing your own performance you will find this letter a useful addition to other information you hold highlighting how people experience or perceive your services.

This year we will publish all our annual letters or our website (www.lgo.org.uk) and share them with the Audit Commission.  There is widespread support from authorities for us to do this.  We will wait for four weeks after this letter before doing so, to give you an opportunity to consider the letter first.  If a letter is found to contain any factual inaccuracy we will reissue it.

In addition to the narrative below there are two attachments which form an integral part of this letter: statistical data covering a three year period and a note to help the interpretation of the statistics.

Complaints received

In 2005/06 I received 85 complaints, just one more than in the previous year. As before, the largest group of complaints is housing. These covered all areas of the service including repairs, housing applications and transfers, homelessness and neighbour nuisance.

There were some variations in the numbers of complaints in other categories. Interestingly, there were falls in the number of planning complaints (from 16 to 7) and social services (from 10 to 5), which is against national trends. These were made up for with an increase in `other' complaints (largely related to a problem with the licensing for weddings of a Registry Office), and in housing benefit complaints (where I am unaware of any underlying reason).

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Decisions on complaints

When we complete an investigation we must issue a report.  There is a significant proportion of investigations that do not reach this stage.  This is because we settle the complaint during the course of our investigation.  We call these decisions “local settlements”.

Decisions were made on 88 complaints last year, of which 29 were referred back to the Council as it had not had a reasonable opportunity to deal with them before I became involved. This was an increase from 18 premature complaints in both previous years. The Council may wish to consider if there is any reason for this increase in the number of people coming to me before the Council has dealt with their complaint. I was unable to consider 20 complaints, because they fell outside my jurisdiction. Of those remaining, none led to a report, but 12 resulted in local settlements.

The local settlements concerned different areas of activity:

In one of the repairs complaints, a family was allocated a property which had outstanding repairs, which affected their daughter's health. Another concerned incorrectly fitted smoke detectors which failed to work when there was a fire in the building - something which could potentially have had serious consequences. The Council now carries out annual checks of smoke detectors.

The homelessness complaint was about someone being given only 24 hours notice to leave their temporary accommodation. The Council did not initially accept it had been at fault, but subsequently reviewed its procedures and drew up new guidance on the termination of temporary housing.

The planning complaints concerned individual errors or delay in dealing with the enforcement of planning control. One highlighted a problem with the Council's complaints procedure, where the panel dealing with the complaint recommended that the Council should require the complainant's neighbour to take some action. In doing so the panel was making a decision on the expedience of enforcement action which was properly the responsibility of the Council as Local Planning Authority. The planning officers decided it was not appropriate to take action. The Council had no mechanism to resolve this conflict. The Council quickly responded to the need to amend its procedures, allowing complaints panels to be reconvened where it is not felt possible to comply with recommendations.

One of the Social Services complaints concerned an individual error, which the Council took prompt action to resolve. In the other, the Council had refused to allow someone to pursue a complaint because it felt the issues had been addressed elsewhere. The Council agreed that this was unreasonable.

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In the special educational needs (SEN) complaint, the Council failed to provide speech and language therapy for a child, where this had been specified in the child's SEN Statement, arguing that this was the responsibility of the local NHS Trust. The family was forced to pay for this therapy to be provided privately. The Council was initially unwilling to accept responsibility for making this provision, but did ultimately accept that, as the provision was specified in the Statement, it was responsible for ensuring it was put in place.

In addition to paying over £800 in compensation to address injustice to individual complainants, in two cases the complaints led to policies and procedures being reviewed and changes made to improve the service.

Your council's complaints procedure and handling of complaints

When complaints are passed back to the Council to consider because they are premature, I write to the complainant after 12 weeks to check whether the Council has resolved the matter. Last year four complaints were resubmitted to me because the complainant remained dissatisfied. This was fewer than average.

Training in complaint handling

Our training in complaint handling is proving very popular with authorities and we continue to receive very positive feedback from participants. Over the last year we have delivered more than 100 courses from the range of three courses that we now offer as part of our role in promoting good administrative practice.

Effective complaint handling was the first course we developed, aimed at staff who deal with complaints as a significant part of their job. Since then we have introduced courses in complaint handling for front line staff and in handling social services complaints.

All courses are presented by an experienced investigator so participants benefit from their knowledge and expertise of complaint handling.

I have enclosed some information on the range of courses available together with contact details for enquiries and bookings.

Liaison with LGO

In most cases the Council responded positively to my enquiries and was willing to agree settlements, as appropriate. In the SEN complaint, however, it took a long time before the Council was persuaded to agree the action necessary to resolve the complaint.

We ask for responses to requests for information to be provided within 28 calendar days. On average the Council's responses to enquiries took 26 days, within the target. This continues a trend over recent years of improved response times (two years ago the average was 38.9 days). It compares well with other similar councils and the Council is to be congratulated on the improvements made.

Your Council's own target is to respond to all our enquiries within our target. There were nevertheless wide variations between service areas - responses to education complaints were quick - an average of 11.3 days, with two responses taking only four days, and there were even responses to some enquiries provided on the same day. On the other hand, a response to a highways complaint took 62 days and social services

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responses took on average 35.3 days (with one response taking 42 days). I appreciate the numbers of complaints involved are low, and that social services complaints tend to be more complex and time consuming than normal. However, the Council may wish to consider whether there are any steps that could be taken to ensure that all responses are provided promptly.

Conclusions/general observations

I welcome this opportunity to give you my reflections about the complaints my office has dealt with over the past year. I hope that you find the information and assessment provided useful when seeking improvements to your Council's services. I would again very much welcome any comments you may have on the form and content of the letter.

I would again be happy to consider requests for myself or a senior colleague to visit the Council to present and discuss the letter with councillors or staff. We will do our best to meet the requests within the limits of the resources available to us.

I am also arranging for a copy of this letter and its attachments to be sent to you electronically so that you can distribute it easily within the Council and post it on your website should you decide to do this.

Yours sincerely

Tony Redmond