‘Awful lot to do’ to improve complaints-handling, Islington Council admits

Islington Town Hall. Photograph: Islington Council.

Islington Council has admitted it has a “huge amount” of work to do to improve its handling of complaints – as its mulls the most recent report from the social care watchdog.

At Thursday’s meeting of the corporate resources and economy scruitny committee, members agreed unanimously that there was an urgent need to address cultural problems that had resulted in meagre responses to residents from various departments.

Despite introducing a new complaints management system, appointing new heads of service and carrying out extensive training for staff on issues like vulnerability, there was still “an awful lot to do”, said Cllr Diarmaid Ward.

“Ultimately this is about culture. This is about how we run the council, how teams are trained, and how we work together and don’t work in silos. That has been something this committee has discussed many, many times.”

In July, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Amerdeep Somal, reported that she had investigated 26 cases in the borough and upheld 85 per cent of residents’ complaints.

Her inquiry threw up repeated issues: delays, poor communications and faults within the system itself.

Somal did add that the rate of upheld complaints is consistent with similar organisations, and that Islington was on the right trajectory in terms of how it had improved its processes.

She also reported that Islington had already provided a satisfactory remedy to complaints in nearly 25 per cent of cases — outperforming similar councils.

But there were still “several occasions” during the year when investigations were delayed because the Town Hall was slow to respond to enquiries.

“We welcomed the significant steps the council took to address the backlog following the report, which meant the number of complaints in its backlog reached manageable levels.

“If there is any support we can provide to help improve the communication between our organisations, please do contact us,” Somal said.

To deliver better results, the council needed to put itself in residents’ shoes, said Manny Lewis, assistant director of resident experience.

He added that 98 per cent of complaints were now being responded to within the council’s 20-day deadline.

Members highlighted that behind every complaint was the “agony and stress”of a resident, while Cllr Jenny Kay said she herself recently began filing complaints to Town Hall departments for the first time in a decade.

“Most of the responses talk about how they didn’t get back to me in time. It all feels quite surreal and somewhat farcical, and I’m just not even sure what to do because there’s nothing substantive in it,” she said.

Cllr Heather Staff said she had observed pattern of guidance and protocols around welfare benefits not being followed.

It transpired that three people from a local tenants and residents’ association (TRA) had also come to the chamber that evening in the hope of getting answers from the council over a delayed new build project which began in 2017.

They were also eager to raise the poor communications and “insincere” apologies they had received from the Town Hall.

“With the experience we’ve had, there’s a lot of chiefs and not a lot of Indians,” said the group’s spokesperson, Sarah.

“I feel like there’s a lot of people getting promoted, but [these are] not people who want to respond to us.

“There’s not been a single bit of communication from the new build team that hasn’t had to be dragged out for them to get any sort of response.

“We didn’t want to be back here today, but we have been invited to two meetings of the housing scrutiny committee and nothing has changed since,” she said.

Another member of the group said he “genuinely wondered” if responses sent by the housing services team were written using ChatGPT, as “it [didn’t] seem like someone engaged with the question, let alone answered it”.

The council states that its housing complaint teams have been consolidated into a single, “better-resourced” unit.

Committee chair Cllr Nick Wayne said “something is going wrong”.

“We all at times go into defensive mode — but sometimes we do make mistakes as an organisation. Nobody’s perfect.

“So much of the casework I deal with is not so much about the substantive issue. It’s about the way residents feel they have been treated. Remember — we are here to serve.”

Cllr Ward said the council’s new casework system had also made matters worse, even compared to the inefficiencies of the Town Hall’s “old-school” ways of managing affairs.

“I take no pleasure in saying this — we’ve reached a point where we just have to accept that the system is not working,” Cllr Ward said.

Part of the council’s strategy has been the creation of a new complaints board, responsible for overseeing and enforcing service improvements.

Lewis said to make individual teams more accountable, “every director” will be tasked with going through complaints, looking at the trends and bringing a plan for improvement to the board.

Alongside this, he echoed Ward’s focus on “training, training, training”.

“Services shouldn’t be marking their own homework on this,” Cllr Ward added.