Complaints

Trevor R Nunn made this Freedom of Information request to City of York Council

The request was successful.

From: Trevor R Nunn

3 October 2008

Dear Sir or Madam,

Pre-question clarification: A complaint against a council may
consist purely on an administrative error or it may also include a
potentially criminal act and/or infringements of a complainants
civil rights (legal and/or human rights).

Therefore, I would like the following information, over the last 12
months, as a percentage of total complaints against the council how
many ended up being dealt with by,

1)the Local Government Ombudsman?

2)the Police?

3)Solicitors and/or the courts?

Yours faithfully,

Trevor R Nunn

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From: Trevor R Nunn

9 January 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of City of York
Council's handling of my FOI request 'Complaints'.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...

Yours sincerely,

Trevor R Nunn

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From: Beane, Robert
City of York Council

21 January 2009

Dear Mr Nunn

Please accept my apologies for not replying to you in a timely fashion. In order to respond to your request, I first need to explain that due to our performance measurement and reporting schedule, we are only able to provide you with figures relating to the period from April 2007 to March 2008, which is the last full 12-month period available at this time.

I have reported the actual figures for numbers of complaints received across the council as opposed to percentages, as due to our current policy and procedures, we only collate figures for the whole council for those complaints dealt with at Stage 2 and 3 of our corporate policy. This means that I am unable to give you percentage figures as per your request. It is only fair to mention that following a review and consultation, we are planning to introduce an updated corporate complaints policy, which extends reporting to include figures for Stage 1.

Also the figures we refer to in this reply do not include any that were dealt with using either statutory or legislative procedures and / or guidance e.g. appeals against planning applications, benefits claims, social care, etc.

From April 2007 to March 2008 the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) advised us of 37 (thirty-seven) new referrals they had received. However, you do need to bear in mind that after investigation, some of these will have been found to be outside the jurisdiction of the LGO and/or found to be "premature" and referred back to our own internal policy and procedures for dealing with customer complaints.

During this period we received the following

Stage 2 - 64 (sixty four)
Stage 3 - 29 (twenty nine)

These complaints may not be the same set from which the LGO referrals were drawn, of course, due to the time lag, so it is not valid to express a percentage.

Having liaised with our LGO Link Officer and Monitoring team, we have not been able to identify any complaints dealt with by the Police or claims through the court system against the council as described in your pre-question clarification.

I hope this information provides the details you were looking for. However please contact us again if you should need any clarification of this information.

Yours Robert Beane

Robert Beane
Information Governance Officer, City of York Council
PO Box 31, Library Square, York, YO1 7DU
01904 552933
[City of York Council request email] or [email address]

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