Compliments & Complaints Annual Report 2021

As this report represents the first year of Buckinghamshire Council there is no direct comparison with previous years, and we do not have the breakdown of complaints for all five former councils to make a comparison.

The Complaints and Improvements Team will continue to work with services to improve our response times. In addition, we will be working with services to improve the quality of stage 1 responses which may help to reduce the number of escalations to stage 2 of the corporate process.

During the next year we will be embedding improvements and learning into services and will be able to report on progress going forward. From 1 June 2021 we have introduced a learning form which is currently being used for Children’s Social Care Complaints.

The Complaints and Improvements Team continue to support the use of the Persistent and Vexatious Complainants Policy in services. During this year four people were added to register with one being removed following advice from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

We are updating our training programme for the Council. This will include meeting with members of staff across the organisation and will cover managing complaints when they are received as well preventing complaints by resolving more issues locally.