Complaints made to Calderdale Council about church bell ringing

Members of the council’s Strategy and Performance Scrutiny Board considered what measures the council was taking to improve dealing with complaints – boardsChairman Coun Paul Bellenger (Lib Dem, Greetland and Stainland) said it was concerning the number of complaints had gone up so much on the previous year, 211 as opposed to 189.

Councillors also recognised the council received more compliments than complaints and it was also important to publicise where the council was doing well.

At a previous Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Board considering the same issue, Coun Stephen Baines (Con, Northowram and Shelf) said complaints were rightly given high profile but compliments should also be better promoted as the council also received a lot of them.

Coun Rob Holden (Ind, Ryburn) said the council had to get better in many aspects, and gave a personal example where he believed an issue could have been dealt with better.

Councillors debated how prodecures worked and asked whether or not the figures included complaints made to councillors from constituents, being told these were not usually recorded.

But Coun Holden said the council had to be careful about what was logged.

“We do filter out quite a lot from the community without a shadow of doubt, but there is a difference people complaining about a street light being out – is it a complaint, or just dealing with an issue?” he said.

Improvement needed to be targeted at areas that really needed it. “We get a lot right, let’s concentrate on areas where there is an issue,” said Coun Holden.

A small number of complainers were vexatious and Coun Bellenger asked if it was legitimate not to respond to these past a certain point.

Officers said it was, and Assistant Director for Customer Services, Sarah Richardson, said: “It is not a decision we take lightly.

“Unfortunately, you always get some people who don’t want to listen to the answer we have given, even when we direct them to the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman doesn’t agree with them, they don’t want to accept that,” she said.

There are complaints however which the Ombudsman does uphold, and councillors were given an example relating to council tax which the Ombudsman – who considered 60 complaints in 2019-2020, investigating 19 and upholding 14 – had ruled in the complainant’s favour and suggested remedies which the council agreed to carry out.

Between April 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020, the council received 507 representations, which included 296 compliments.

In all 211 complaints were received of which 77 (36.5 per cent) were upheld or partly upheld, 93 (44 per cent) were not upheld and 41 (19.5 per cent) were withdrawn, said Complaints and Compliments Officer Richard Noble’s report.

The bulk of these – 112 – related to public services, with 26 being made about the Chief Executive’s office, mainly relating to the council tax team (12; 46 per cent), 22 relating to children and young people’s services and 51 to renegeration and strategy.