Ombudsman “encouraged” by response of city council to complaints-handling review
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) has hailed the progress Liverpool City Council has made on overhauling and improving the way it handles its complaints.
The Ombudsman was invited to carry out a full review of Liverpool’s complaint handling procedures, as part of a raft of reviews prompted by government-appointed commissioners brought in to oversee the authority’s performance.
The LGSCO produced a report in June 2022 containing a number of recommendations on how the council could improve. These were focused on streamlining multiple complaint processes to give people complaining a consistent experience, bringing more senior oversight of complaints and developing a way to ensure the council uses complaints to improve.
The council subsequently developed a plan to respond to the recommendations. Actions progressed so far include work to bring three separate complaints teams together, training its staff and embedding complaints data into regular management reporting.
The LGSCO said data from its latest annual complaints statistics for all councils “backs up the positive way Liverpool has approached the Ombudsman’s review”.
It revealed that in a quarter of cases in which fault was found, the Ombudsman agreed with the remedy that Liverpool had proposed to put things right when first responding to the complaint. This compared with an average of 10% for similar councils.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Paul Najsarek, said he was pleased with the way Liverpool responded to the LGSCO’s review, giving it open access to its systems and staff. “While we heard that good complaint handling was often down to individuals taking the initiative rather than a wholescale approach, the council did demonstrate a willingness and ability to change.”
He added: “It is encouraging to hear the progress the council has made when considering and implementing many of the recommendations in last year’s review.
“I now look forward to the council maintaining this momentum and pushing ahead with its improvement journey. Wholescale change such as that which Liverpool has pledged to undertake needs time to bed in to ensure it endures beyond the initial improvements the council has made.”
Cllr Liam Robinson, Leader of Liverpool, said: “I am really delighted with the positive feedback we have had from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
“As part of our improvement journey, we are committed to being an open and transparent council, accountable for our actions.”
He added: “We are a large and complex organisation and will not get everything right, but we are determined to learn from our mistakes, put things right and put in place measures to prevent them happening again.
“We are committed to continuous improvement and learning, which is why we invited the LGSCO to work with us.”
Harry Rodd
