DEVON County Council’s senior officials are being urged to improve the time it takes to respond to complaints after meeting just under two-thirds of deadlines.

Out of 1,595 complaints to the council in the last financial year, only 1,035 were responded to in time.

While most complaints have to be met within 20 days set by the authority, children’s services is subject to statutory timeframes and has three stages.

The council’s standards committee has heard that education, children’s social care, and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) department tended to have most complaints, although the climate change, environment and transport directorate received most last year, at 795.

Children’s social care was second with 336, education and learning third with 268 and integrated adult social care came fourth with 197.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO), which intervenes when complainants don’t feel their issue has been resolved, was involved in 151 complaints across the whole year under review.

Of those, 81 were investigated, and around four in five were upheld by the ombudsman.

At 83 per cent, the rate of decisions upheld is up on the previous year’s 74 per cent, but below the 85 per cent average in other local authorities.

The LGSCO made 128 recommendations to the county council as a result of the upheld complaints, including mandating a total of £72,000 in compensation for complainants. Most of the compensation was related to delays in education, health and care plans.

Cllr Alan Connett (Liberal Democrat, Exminster and Haldon) said while he accepted that Devon might not be dissimilar to other local authorities in terms of the percentage of complaints upheld, he was displeased.

“We’re getting worse and the report seems to suggest the council should be okay because we’re below average,” he said.

“I’m rather appalled we’re getting worse, and while I understand the pressures in children’s services, when people make complaints against an organisation, they tend to look more favourably if they get a prompt reply but have a bad impression of those that they are forever chasing.”

Cllr Connett asked when things might improve and what the committee could do to ensure greater oversight.

“We’ve been asked to consider this report, but how do we make our scrutiny effective, so that directors give it some oomph and clarity of approach, and say that dealing with complaints is important,” he said.

These comments prompted the committee to adopt a further recommendation beyond just considering and commenting on the report.

The committee formally escalated its concerns to Devon’s senior leadership team and urged it to have a stronger focus on the timeliness of response times to reduce the likelihood of them escalating to more serious levels.

Bradley Gerrard