Stockport Council

Dear Sheila

Thank you for your request made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000
on Friday 19 March 2010. We will endeavour to respond to your enquiry
within 20 working days.

We will process your request in due course, but should you need to query
anything further, please email [1][LGA request email] quoting Case
ENQ-149371-KM9I

Please redact all personal information from this email thread on the What
Do They Know website in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998

Kind Regards

LGA

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Dear Sheila

Thank you for your request for information made under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA) on 19 March 2010. Please note that the LGA is
not covered by the provisions of the Act, but we always try to deal with
such requests within the spirit of the legislation.

We have considered your request for a procedure to get round an alleged
blockage by senior council officers at Stockport. We do not hold any
specific data on this, so I am going to outline the general complaints
procedure that local councils use (although please bear in mind that there
may be local differences from council to council, so you are best off
contacting the council direct for their complaints procedure).

If you have a complaint with the authority about something they were
supposed to do but didnt, and you havent yet raised the complaint with
your local authority, you should:
A) Phone the local authority to make the complaint (contact details will
be on the authorities website)
B) If no satisfaction, write to the senior officer in charge of the
service, or if that fails, the Chief Executive of the authority (again,
the authorities website will have this information)
C) If that does not produce results, you should contact your local
councillor.

If you have been through the above procedures, and still feel that the
council has let you down in providing a service, or doing something else
which they were supposed to do, then you can raise your complaint with the
Local Government Ombudsman. Their website, at [1]www.lgo.org.uk, will
advise you on how to complain, and who to complain to.

If you disagree with a policy the council has decided on, you can continue
to raise your objections with the council, and your local councillor, but
they are entirely within their rights to continue with the policy. That is
what local democracy is all about!

You have also touched upon the Information Commissioners role in this
complaint - I suggest you refer back to them if they have asked the
council to do something which they subsequently have not. I hope all this
helps

Kind Regards

LGconnect

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