Department for Communities and Local Government - Complaints ...

consider, at Board level, questions regarding numerical trends, the issues complained
about and acted upon and the customer experience of complaining.
Number of complaints
o Are there any trends in the number of complaints you have received this year or in
comparison to previous years
o What do you think are the reasons for these trends and what action do you need to
take
Learning from complaints
o Are there any trends in the subject of complaints you have received
o What do you think are the reasons for these trends What have you learnt from
complaints, customer feedback and feedback from Parliament’s Ombudsman
o What have you improved about your services and administration as a result
o What further action do you need to take to address any outstanding issues
identified by complaints
Experience of complaining
o What are your service standards for complaint handling What is your performance
against those standards
o What are your customers and Parliament’s Ombudsman telling you about public
experiences of making a complaint
o When did you last audit your complaint handling and what were the findings and
recommendations For example, which parts of the Cross Government Complaints
Forum standards do you meet
o What action has been taken or needs to be taken as a result
2. Key issues from our casework
Statistical trends
The number of complaints we received about the Department for Communities and Local
Government increased by 10% to 132 in 2012. Over 60% of these related to the Planning
Inspectorate which saw a 4% increase. The number of complaints about the Department
accepted for investigation fell from 5 in 2011 to 3 in 2012. We investigated 5 complaints
about the Department in 2012 compared to 1 in 2011, all of which were upheld.
Casework issues – learning from complaints and the experience of complaining
We investigated 4 complaints about the Planning Inspectorate - all were about the
Inspectorate’s decision to routinely refuse to pay compensation for the impact of their
mistakes on service users. This led to the users themselves bearing the impact of the
Inspectorate’s mistakes, unless they approached us. We found that decision at odds with
our Principles and Treasury guidance. In October 2012 we published a short report about