Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to know the average proportion of time the elected
representatives of your authority spend as part of their duties for
2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 on their main activities. The
activities that form their duties (employment) as an elected
representative are:

1 directly resolving complaints against the executive (Council
Staff) of the Council by residents; 2 sitting on committee's; 3
acting for the political parties that they represent and/or
ceremonial duties (i.e. all time not spent on sitting on a
Committee or resolving a complaint against the executive);

The total time spent by an elected representative for a Council on
these three activities should be 100 per cent of the time they
spend 'working for a Council' as an elected representative.

I would additionally like to know how much in total was paid to
local councillors to meet all their duties (including expenses) for
2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 by your authority, and how many
elected representatives are (and were) represented on your
authority for these years.

I would also like to know how many Complaints in total were
submitted to your Council in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 for
each year. I would further like to know how many of these
complaints were formally considered by an elected representative
for each of these years.

I would further like to know how many complaints against the
Executive (Council staff) led to the elected representatives
formally identifying that the Executive had acted wrongly for the
years 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008, and how many of these
formal determinations by the elected representatives identify that
there was no wrong-doing by the Executive. How many staff employed
by your authority in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 ceased to
be employed by your authority as a direct result of a complaint
against the Executive, and the Councillors identifying this to be
the case.

I would further like to know how much money the Council has paid to
a complainant (i.e. victim of a Council's wrongdoing) through its
own complaints system (i.e. excluding any intervention by the Local
Government Ombudsman, Valuation Tribunal or similar body) in
2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008.

I would like to know how much money either in the form of local
settlement or additional formal finding of maladministration
causing injustice the Local Government Ombudsman has recommended
that your Council pay in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 (for
each year) and if the Local Government Ombudsman's recommendations
have been met in full (including any non-financial recommendations
for each year)). Please detail any recommendation that has not been
met in full and provide a copy of the Elected representatives
decision. Please additionally identify if these costs were met
directly by Council Tax Payers or the Council's insurers (excluding
self insurance by a Council)

Finally, please provide details of the financial cost of
administering all your complaints systems (including FoI and DP) by
the Executive for 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 and the number
of staff employed in administering complaints and resolving these
(Full time equivalent staffing levels). Please also provide details
of your total administrative costs for 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and
2007/2008 and the total number of staff employed by your authority,
as well as any pay increase (including increments) made to the
Council's Chief Executive (Head of Paid Service) in pounds sterling
for each of these years. Please additionally identify if the Chief
Executives wages included performance related payments.

If you do not have this reasonably basic management information
related to complaints and/or identify that the costs of accessing
the information requested will be more than £450 please state this
and identify that your Authority does not have either a functioning
or accountable complaints system, and does not maintain any basic
management information related to this issue.

If you have a complaints system not fit for purpose please identify
which political party currently controls your Council, and if this
political party has appointed the current Electoral Registration
and Returning Officer through its control of the Council (with date
of their formal appointment). Please name the current Electoral
Registration and Returning Officer, and identify if they are also
Head of Paid Service, and Clerk to your Authority. Please
additionally provide any documentation maintained by your Local
Authorities Head of Paid Service identifying that they personally
do not believe it to be appropriate for your Council to have a
complaints system that is fit for purpose. This documentation
should be in existence due to the provisions of s4 of the Local
Government Act 1989.

Yours faithfully

Stuart HARDWICKE CARRUTHERS

Dear Sir or Madam,

response overdue

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Hardwicke CARRUTHERS

Dear Mr Carruthers

Thank you for your reminder as below.

Unfortunately I am unable to find any trace of receipt of an initial enquiry from you.

Following earlier issues whereby requests from whatdotheyknow.com were not received by the Council, our IT department have checked e-mail SPAM filter settings and confirmed that they do not block submissions from the site. It therefore seems that your e-mail correspondence of 28 September, opened by this office today, was the first that we knew of any interest you may have in information held by the Council.

Regrettably, as we still have not received your initial query or queries, your e-mail of yesterday (or, indeed, your initial submission to whatdotheyknow.com) cannot be classed as a valid Freedom of Information Request. If you would like to submit your enquiry to [Sunderland City Council request email] I will be happy to ensure that it is logged and referred to the appropriate Link Officers on receipt.

I trust this is satisfactory.

Kind regards,

O Thomas
Sunderland City Council

show quoted sections

Dear Owen Thomas,

Attached is a copy of the request

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Hardwicke CARRUTHERS

Stuart Hardwicke CARRUTHERS

24 August 2008

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to know the average proportion of time the elected
representatives of your authority spend as part of their duties for
2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 on their main activities. The
activities that form their duties (employment) as an elected
representative are:

1 directly resolving complaints against the executive (Council
Staff) of the Council by residents; 2 sitting on committee's; 3
acting for the political parties that they represent and/or
ceremonial duties (i.e. all time not spent on sitting on a
Committee or resolving a complaint against the executive);

The total time spent by an elected representative for a Council on
these three activities should be 100 per cent of the time they
spend 'working for a Council' as an elected representative.

I would additionally like to know how much in total was paid to
local councillors to meet all their duties (including expenses) for
2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 by your authority, and how many
elected representatives are (and were) represented on your
authority for these years.

I would also like to know how many Complaints in total were
submitted to your Council in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 for
each year. I would further like to know how many of these
complaints were formally considered by an elected representative
for each of these years.

I would further like to know how many complaints against the
Executive (Council staff) led to the elected representatives
formally identifying that the Executive had acted wrongly for the
years 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008, and how many of these
formal determinations by the elected representatives identify that
there was no wrong-doing by the Executive. How many staff employed
by your authority in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 ceased to
be employed by your authority as a direct result of a complaint
against the Executive, and the Councillors identifying this to be
the case.

I would further like to know how much money the Council has paid to
a complainant (i.e. victim of a Council's wrongdoing) through its
own complaints system (i.e. excluding any intervention by the Local
Government Ombudsman, Valuation Tribunal or similar body) in
2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008.

I would like to know how much money either in the form of local
settlement or additional formal finding of maladministration
causing injustice the Local Government Ombudsman has recommended
that your Council pay in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 (for
each year) and if the Local Government Ombudsman's recommendations
have been met in full (including any non-financial recommendations
for each year)). Please detail any recommendation that has not been
met in full and provide a copy of the Elected representatives
decision. Please additionally identify if these costs were met
directly by Council Tax Payers or the Council's insurers (excluding
self insurance by a Council)

Finally, please provide details of the financial cost of
administering all your complaints systems (including FoI and DP) by
the Executive for 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 and the number
of staff employed in administering complaints and resolving these
(Full time equivalent staffing levels). Please also provide details
of your total administrative costs for 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and
2007/2008 and the total number of staff employed by your authority,
as well as any pay increase (including increments) made to the
Council's Chief Executive (Head of Paid Service) in pounds sterling
for each of these years. Please additionally identify if the Chief
Executives wages included performance related payments.

If you do not have this reasonably basic management information
related to complaints and/or identify that the costs of accessing
the information requested will be more than £450 please state this
and identify that your Authority does not have either a functioning
or accountable complaints system, and does not maintain any basic
management information related to this issue.

If you have a complaints system not fit for purpose please identify
which political party currently controls your Council, and if this
political party has appointed the current Electoral Registration
and Returning Officer through its control of the Council (with date
of their formal appointment). Please name the current Electoral
Registration and Returning Officer, and identify if they are also
Head of Paid Service, and Clerk to your Authority. Please
additionally provide any documentation maintained by your Local
Authorities Head of Paid Service identifying that they personally
do not believe it to be appropriate for your Council to have a
complaints system that is fit for purpose. This documentation
should be in existence due to the provisions of s4 of the Local
Government Act 1989.

Yours faithfully

Stuart HARDWICKE CARRUTHERS

Dear Mr Carruthers

Thank you for your interest in the information that is held by the Council.

Your questions below have been logged under Customer No 811, Query No 1187 and will be forwarded to the appropriate Link Officers for action and response.

I trust this is satisfactory.

Regards,

O Thomas
Sunderland City Council

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Carruthers

Thank you for your interest in information held by the Council. Having made enquiries of the various areas of the Council with an interest in the information you seek, I can now respond to your individual enquiries as follows: -

I would like to know the average proportion of time the elected

representatives of your authority spend as part of their duties for

2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 on their main activities. The

activities that form their duties (employment) as an elected

representative are:

1 directly resolving complaints against the executive (Council

Staff) of the Council by residents; 2 sitting on committee's; 3

acting for the political parties that they represent and/or

ceremonial duties (i.e. all time not spent on sitting on a

Committee or resolving a complaint against the executive);

The total time spent by an elected representative for a Council on

these three activities should be 100 per cent of the time they

spend 'working for a Council' as an elected representative.

The Council does not compile statistical information of this nature. The position of Councillor is not comparable to, say, a more typical office job with contracted hours of work and/or fixed duties. Some Councillors are in full time employment whilst others may work part time or be retired from work. Some may have parenting or caring duties and may also carry out other duties of a public office nature such as being a Magistrate or member of a Hospital or Health Trust.

You should also note that one Councillor’s duties and activities are not necessarily comparable to those of another; for example the duties of a Councillor who has been elected Mayor will be very different to those of one who has been elected Leader of the Council or perhaps Chairman of a Committee. It follows that the role of a Councillor with no such responsibilities will be significantly different again.

The time a Councillor spends on constituents within his or her ward and on problem solving will vary from personality to personality and the measure of any individual Councillor’s success or otherwise can only be effectively measured in the ballot box at election time.

I would additionally like to know how much in total was paid to

local councillors to meet all their duties (including expenses) for

2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 by your authority, and how many

elected representatives are (and were) represented on your

authority for these years.

Information relating to Members’ Allowances is contained in the Council’s publication scheme and can also be found on our website at – <http://www.sunderland.gov.uk/public/edit...> http://www.sunderland.gov.uk/public/edit... .

I would also like to know how many Complaints in total were

submitted to your Council in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 for

each year. I would further like to know how many of these

complaints were formally considered by an elected representative

for each of these years.

This information is attached in Tables 1 to 4.

I would further like to know how many complaints against the

Executive (Council staff) led to the elected representatives

formally identifying that the Executive had acted wrongly for the

years 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008, and how many of these

formal determinations by the elected representatives identify that

there was no wrongdoing by the Executive.

While each case will clearly have an outcome where a Customer’s complaint is upheld, partially upheld or overturned, it would be a mistake to suggest that many – if any – Customer Complaints can be categorized in the simple right / wrong black-and-white manner your question suggests. The Council feels that such enforced distinctions would be artificial and could well be counterproductive and therefore does not seek to compile or report on such figures. Although some comparable information is, strictly, ‘held’ within the records of each Customer complaint, extracting and processing it into a format that would answer your question would require a basic re-evaluation of each of the several hundred complaints reported on at Table 1. Assuming that each re-evaluation could be completed in 5 minutes (in reality this would be a conservative estimate, but the figure suffices for the purposes of this exercise) the time taken to answer this part of your request would take in excess of 100 hours and is therefore refused.

How many staff employed by your authority in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and

2007/2008 ceased to be employed by your authority as a direct result of a

complaint against the Executive, and the Councillors identifying this to be

the case.

None.

I would further like to know how much money the Council has paid to

a complainant (i.e. victim of a Council's wrongdoing) through its

own complaints system (i.e. excluding any intervention by the Local

Government Ombudsman, Valuation Tribunal or similar body) in

2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008.

Information relating to sums paid to complainants is collected in Table 5 (attached). I have already mentioned the difficulties that can be encountered in determining if and where there is a clear responsibility or blame applicable to a particular complaint. In cases such as this you should note that the Council – as sometimes happens in other responsible organizations – may on occasion make a payment to help ‘draw a line under’ a particular case, perhaps where a customer is clearly aggrieved, but where it is not possible to ascribe clear fault or responsibility to a particular party or body, or even where responsibility is perhaps shared between Council and Customer. Accordingly, whilst your question assumes a clear ‘wrongdoing’ and a clear ‘victim’, I do not think this paints a reliable or helpful view of local authority complaint resolution.

I would like to know how much money either in the form of local

settlement or additional formal finding of maladministration

causing injustice the Local Government Ombudsman has recommended

that your Council pay in 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 (for

each year)…

This information is enclosed in Table 5 attached.

…and if the Local Government Ombudsman's recommendations

have been met in full (including any non-financial recommendations

for each year)).

Sunderland City Council has a policy of continuous improvement and aims to deliver on the goals set in that policy year on year. The Council makes a point of taking on board all Ombudsman recommendations and observations as a valuable tool to help us achieve these goals. However…

Please detail any recommendation that has not been

met in full and provide a copy of the Elected representatives

decision.

…I am sure you will appreciate that, with the best will in the World, it may not always be possible to deliver on a recommendation for any one of a number of reasons. At present, we do not report on this aspect of the Complaints Process and therefore cannot answer your question.

Please additionally identify if these costs were met

directly by Council Tax Payers or the Council's insurers (excluding

self insurance by a Council)

In each of the cases identified in Table 5 as above, payment was made from the Cost Centre appropriate to the Department or Section with ownership of the service or services that generated the complaint.

Finally, please provide details of the financial cost of

administering all your complaints systems (including FoI and DP) by

the Executive for 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 and the number

of staff employed in administering complaints and resolving these

(Full time equivalent staffing levels).

The Council does not measure specific costs associated with the administration of complaints and information requests and as such is unable to answer this aspect of your enquiry directly. We are able to confirm that costs, estimated for the purposes of a recent project, came to £390,607 per annum involving the use of 11.66 FTE’s across a range of grades.

Please also provide details

of your total administrative costs for 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and

2007/2008 and the total number of staff employed by your authority…

This information can be found in the Council’s Publication Scheme, published in our annual accounts as well as on our website via the link <http://www.sunderland.gov.uk/Public/Edit...> http://www.sunderland.gov.uk/Public/Edit...

as well as any pay increase (including increments) made to the

Council's Chief Executive (Head of Paid Service) in pounds sterling

for each of these years. Please additionally identify if the Chief

Executives wages included performance related payments.

…In respect of Chief Executive pay increases, we implement the pay increases agreed through the Joint Negotiating Council for Chief Executives. The local government employers act as the employer side secretariat for this purpose. Their website can be found at <http://www.lge.gov.uk/> www.lge.gov.uk as can the appropriate contact details. Percentage increases for the last two years are 2.475% with effect from 1 April 2007 and 2.5% with effect from 1 April 2008. The Council does not operate performance related pay schemes, progressions of increments.

If you do not have this reasonably basic management information

related to complaints and/or identify that the costs of accessing

the information requested will be more than £450 please state this

and identify that your Authority does not have either a functioning

or accountable complaints system, and does not maintain any basic

management information related to this issue.

If you have a complaints system not fit for purpose please identify

which political party currently controls your Council, and if this

political party has appointed the current Electoral Registration

and Returning Officer through its control of the Council (with date

of their formal appointment). Please name the current Electoral

Registration and Returning Officer, and identify if they are also

Head of Paid Service, and Clerk to your Authority. Please

additionally provide any documentation maintained by your Local

Authorities Head of Paid Service identifying that they personally

do not believe it to be appropriate for your Council to have a

complaints system that is fit for purpose. This documentation

should be in existence due to the provisions of s4 of the Local

Government Act 1989.

As your preceding questions have been answered as fully as available information allows, the Council does not consider these two paragraph to contain a valid request for information under the terms of the FOI Act. In any event, you should note that FOI provisions allow individuals to request information that is held by public authorities – if and where a public authority is unable to answer your question, it is not necessarily reasonable to presume that that authority’s information or systems is unfit for the authority’s purposes. In this regard, we should be mindful that a public authority’s legitimate purposes and your own may be substantially different – where those systems support the effective delivery of the authority’s business it would be wholly misleading to suggest that they are unfit for purposes simply because they do not answer your questions.

I trust this is satisfactory. If, however, you are dissatisfied with our response to your requests, you can ask for this to be reviewed in reply to this letter. If requested, a review will be removed from the initial responding Directorate and will be coordinated by the Customer Services Manager on behalf of the Chief Executive.

If this fails to resolve your concerns then you have a right to apply to the Information Commissioner's Office for a decision.

Sincerely,

O Thomas
Sunderland City Council