Complaints regarding Aggression to the public from council employees

Dear 'Oracle'

SUBJECT: Acknowledgement of your application for Information dated
28/12/08
Thank you for your email requesting information about complaints involving
aggression to the public from council employees.

The application was received on 29/12/08.
The Council will seek to provide the information that you have requested
within the next 20 working days or let you know from where else it can be
obtained. We may not be able to provide everything if we do not hold the
information, or if an exemption to releasing the information applies.

Information is often provided free of charge, but if there could be a fee
for processing and delivering the information to you this will notified to
you before we progress.
We will usually provide the information in either an electronic or paper
format according to how you contacted us. If you require the information
in another specific format please contact me to discuss your needs.

Any future correspondence or questions you may have in relation to this
matter should be emailed to me.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Pearson
Member Support Officer

Dear 'Oracle'

Your application for information that was received by the Council on 29
December 2008 has now been considered and this letter is a full response
to that application. I apologise that there has been a delay in supplying
the information.

Your request was to be supplied with information about complaints received
from members of the public about staff attitudes and Plymouth City
Council's policy in this regard.

In order to provide data in response to your request for information the
Council has considered its complaint records which are available from
01/04/98.

The Council is unable to identify which complaints fall into the category
that you have identified without reviewing the complaint records, as the
nearest descriptive category that the Council uses to what you are
requesting is 'staff attitude'. The term 'staff attitude' covers a wide
variety of perceived behaviours and some of these complaints will include
' aggressive (aggression), intimidatory, (intimidation) discriminatory
(discrimination) or excessive behaviours of Council Employees, at work'.

We can report that in this approximate 10 year period to date Plymouth
City Council has recorded 445 stage one complaints regarding 'staff
attitude' and 19 stage two complaints. As the Council has approximately
14000 staff the ratio of 'staff attitude' complaints to staff is
approximately 3 per 1000 staff.

We consider that the time required to identify the category of complaints
that you have requested will exceed the time available to answer requests
for information proscribed under the Fees Regulations, so the Council has
not reanalysed its complaints records to answer your application exactly.

Therefore we hope that the information that is supplied will be sufficient
for your purposes.

The Council has a code of conduct for employees which sets out the seven
Nolan principles including "Accountability" - "Holders of public office
are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must
submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office".
Allegations of Aggression to members of the public would be considered
under the staff disciplinary policy. The Council also has training courses
on customer services and communications with customers which run on a
regular basis and these courses provide direction on appropriate staff
behaviour towards customers.

Please note that the information supplied to you continues to be protected
by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You can use the
information supplied for your own purposes, including any non-commercial
research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other
reuse such as commercial publication would require the permission of the
Council.

If you are not satisfied with the way your request has been handled you
may ask for an internal review to take place.

I hope that we have supplied the information that you expected to
receive. If you wish to discuss this letter or the information that is
supplied then please contact me through the direct line telephone number
below, but please leave a contact telephone number if I am unavailable. I
can also be contacted by email .

Yours sincerely

Andrew Pearson
Member Support Officer
Member Support Team
Chief Executive's Department
Plymouth City Council

Tel: (01752) 304139
Email: [email address]