Department for Communities and Local Government - Complaints ...

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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
those complaints: A false economy – Investigations into how people are recompensed for government mistakes. Working with PHSO The Planning Inspectorate responded positively to our investigations. They compensated the four complainants and considered another 14 compensation claims. They made payments totalling £312,243 plus interest. They also changed their approach to providing compensation. However, we also carried out two interventions in relation to complaints about the Homes and Communities Agency, and the Agency missed our deadlines both for accepting our findings and recommendations and in complying with them. 3. Statistics I have attached in an annex some statistical information about the Department and its agencies for 2012. We hope that you find these comments useful. We would be very happy of course to elaborate on the issues we have raised if you found this helpful. Yours sincerely, Dame Julie Mellor, DBE Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Page 1: From the Ombudsman Dame Julie Mello
Page 5 and 6: Themes of investigations The invest
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