Complaints about York Council up by 20%

1622 complaints were made against the York Council in the 12 months to April 2019. The figures are revealed in a report published today. They represent an increase from the 1353 recorded in the previous year.

The vast majority of the complaints related to lack of action with other relating to “inappropriate action” 45% of the complaints were either fully or partially upheld. 397 cases reach a second complaint stage. 58% of these were at least partially upheld.

156 complaints were escalated to the final local stage with 6 at least partially upheld.

60 cases were sent on to the Ombudsman who upheld 11 of them. A summary of the Ombudsman’s finding in each case is included at the end of the report In some case modest financial compensation has been paid.

The figures show an increase in complaints about social care.

236 “compliments” were also recorded about the Council and its staff

Lowfields misery continues

The Lowfield Action Group Facebook page makes it clear that residents have major concerns about the current development works in the area.

There are continuing complaints about noise, dust and working hours extending beyond those approved in the planning permission.

Communications from the Council have been minimal although another exhibition is promised prior to the main contractor starting on site. The current contractor is only undertaking clearance and layout works.

One piece of good news is that work on providing an additional 3 parking spaces on Tudor Road is due to start next week.

The Council latest planning application, which should have been determined by the end of April, it is still outstanding.

There is still no sign of a planning application for the Care Home much less the health centre and “police station”, not that they were ever likely to materialise anyway.

“Yorspace” are apparently still trying to raise funds for their “communal living” scheme while the Councils decision to sell them land at a discounted rate may yet prove to have been illegal.

Hopefully the new Council will be able to find someone competent and sensitive to local residents views when they decide who will lead on housing and planning matters for the next 4 years.

Certainly communication and supervisory systems need major improvements.

York Council claims over 50% of complaints answered within 5 days

…we don’t think so!

The Council has published its latest financial and performance update. It reveals that it could overspend this year’s budget by as much as £1.5 million. The expectation is that the Council will outturn on target.

A major source of complaint is paradoxically complaint handing. The Council claims to have answered “50% of complaints within 5 working days”.

Maybe!

….but we have a current instance of a complaint registered on 27^th December 2018 which hasn’t even been acknowledged yet. The Council needs to improve its exception reporting systems and inject some fresh drive into its customer relationship processes.

Another key concern is the impact that the Council is having on delayed discharges (bed blocking) at the hospital. “The total number of days that patients resident in York have been delayed, for all reasons, during the last twelve months for which statistics have been published (November 17 – October 18) was 10,655 which equates to, on average, 29 beds each day occupied because of DToC across the health and social care system. From August to October 2018, this figure was 2,967 days which equates to 32 beds each day”. The Council says that the closure of two large nursing homes in the city has impacted on the ability of Adult Social Care to place patients quickly, as well as considerable pressures in both the residential and homecare markets.

The future of the Greenworks section of Yorkcraft has also never been properly explained. The Council is reducing the budget by a further £160,000 for adult social care workers, in supported employment, during the next financial year. So the future looks bleak for some of the workers who are a familiar sight as they deliver newsletters to various parts of the City.

Following the decision by the Council to suspend its housing modernisation programme the number of Council homes not meeting the decency standard has soared to 546.

It was zero two years ago

Report on public service reports in York

click to view

A report has been published which analyses the reports made by members of the public using the “Fix My Street” app. The University of Sterling research report relates issue volumes to “areas of deprivation”.

The York Council decided some 5 years ago to develop its own “app” for public service issue reporting (“Report it”). However the system has never worked properly lacking the flexibility and features available in commercial systems. Only litter and street lighting reports produce an instance reference number and “job completed” notifications.

Despite promises of an early upgrade to meet modern standards none has been forthcoming.

Clearly many residents still opt for “Fix My Street” and other systems to report issues. This means that someone at the Council has to manually re-key the reports into its ageing IT system.

This is the kind of inefficiency that the Council needs to tackle if it is to invest more in actually dealing with issues *on the street”

The Stirling research – not surprisingly – reveals that road and footpath reports are by far the greatest concern of York residents.

City of York Council – “I’d like to complain about not being able to complain”

One of the mistakes that some organisations make is believing that ignoring complaints will make issues go away.

That rarely works. Instead the organisations image is dented and the credibility of the management structure is brought into question.

That seems to be happening wit the City of York Council at present.

They have three tier process for handling complaints. If a resident is not satisfied with a response to a first complaint then a second stage can be invoked. This escalates the issue for consideration by a senior manager.

If this doesn’t work then, in theory at least, you can then escalate the matter to the Chief Executive.

Well you could, if the Council reads your complaint in the first place and acknowledges that they have received it.

For the last few months that doesn’t seem to have been happening.

Those emailing the complaints team at haveyoursay@york.gov.uk will have been lucky not to have been ignored. Requests for a “delivered” or “read” electronic receipt produce nothing.

The Councils IT department confirms that the Emails are being delivered. The only explanation can be that the complaints section has “downed tools”?

Oh and try the complaints telephone number quoted on the Council’s web site and you will get – you guessed – and answering machine!

There is a similar lack of response on the, recently announced, consultation address for the Low Poppleton Lane bus lane lowpoppletonlane.trial@york.gov.uk

So the Council risks an adverse Ombudsman enquiry – with all that implies in terms of handling costs – simply because it took the metaphorical “phone off the hook”!

York Council’s secrecy culture rapped by Ombudsman

The Local Government Ombudsman has criticised the York Council for failing to publish background documents.

In the watchdogs annual performance letter it says,

“Last year we stressed that serving such notices should only be done exceptionally to avoid giving the appearance of a lack of transparency by the Council. It is, therefore, very disappointing to see this practice has continued this year.

Your Council has issued two section 32(3) confidentiality notices that we considered were not appropriate but the Council, when asked, did not comment on why they had done so. I would urge your Council to address this issue as a matter of urgency as it affects our ability to properly investigate complaints against it.

These instances lead me to have serious concerns about the Council’s commitment to positively address complaints made against it in an open and transparent manner”.

In total the Ombudsman received 56 complaints about the York Council

Eight cases of maladministration, by the Council, were found last year.

So how good is the York Councils customer management system?

Hopefully Councillors will raise the veil of secrecy on 12^th June when they receive another report on “Digital Services”. It is the latest episode in a drama which has offered much but has, so far, delivered very little to customers.

Put simply, the Council fails to manage its electronic interface with customers to an acceptable standard. Much faith was placed in the IT project which is now running 18 months behind schedule. So far, the only “on line” reports, using the “My Account” system, that can be made, concern litter.

These are usually dealt with quickly but are not without hiccups. An automatically generated “issue closed” Email message recently proved to be incorrect. The reported broken bottle was still there several hours after the issue had been closed (it was reopened).

But the main concern is that the vast majority of issues simply can’t be reported via the Councils web site with any confidence that action will be taken. They simply disappear into the ether with apparently random reference numbers generated which citizens find impossible to match to individual reports.

As we have said before, the system still lacks the flexibility of proprietary solutions like “fix my street”. The Council could have bought a system off the shelf – as most other authorities have done – and by now would have been off and running.

All the Council can promise is that 7 more street service issues will be added to the system by the end of the summer.

It does claim that around 1000 digital transactions are completed each week but this includes high volume financial transactions.

The Council has seen a significant drop in the number of telephone calls that it receives. Fewer people visited the Customer Centre last year.

Significantly though, the Council still does not provide speed stats on key interfaces like Email. It is three years since the Council promised to improve its performance on this access channel.

It does look to customers like Emails still take 48 hours to be passed from the customer centre to the responsible department.

Some departments do later respond to reports lodged in this way.

Many do not.

Performance “open data” on web site not updated. No figures provided for volumes. Email numbers completely missing

6 months since responsible Executive member publicly reviewed performance of customer contact centre

Extraordinary response from City of York Council to FOI request

Readers will recall that a few weeks ago we published a list of inquiries that York Councillors had recorded with the City of York Council.

The list (left) indicated how many inquiries individual Councillors had recorded during the 2015/16 year.

We submitted an Freedom of Information request asking for the up to date figures for the 2016/17 year.

The Council has now responded saying,

“This information is exempt under section 44 of the FOIA because it is considered that due to the forthcoming general election, it could affect public support for a particular party.

Should you wish to submit a new request for this information following the election, the council would be happy to consider this”.

Given that none of the York Councillors are candidates in the General Election we do wonder how voting intentions might be influenced by the publication of a factual list?

Perhaps the electors in the Hull Road and Micklegate Council by elections deserve to know how hard they might expect their new Councillors to work for them?

York “rewiring” plan; Cliff Richard, Fred Smith Electrical or City of York Council?

The York Council has said it will spend £10 million over the next 5 years on IT equipment. Their intention is to force residents to use electronic communications to communicate with the Council.

Cliff Richard – rewired for sound

They promise (or threaten) that each local resident will have their own web page account.

The move comes following our revelation that the number contacting the Council by telephone or through a personal visit has spiralled since their move to the “West Offices”.

They have dubbed the scheme as service “rewiring” – a piece of jargon guaranteed to pass over the heads of most residents.

A report, nodded through by the Labour leadership on Tuesday, fails to make any kind of business case for the huge expenditure.

The report is riddled with management jargon and hyperbole plus much conjecture about what residents want.

Attached to the report is the 6 monthly review of service quality.

This revealed that many targets are already being missed by the Council with recycling rates reducing and the numbers using the bus service in sharp decline since Labour meddled with the services when they took office.

Confidence in the Councils ability to deal with reports and complaints has already been damaged.

The “app” launched to allow smart phone reporting of issues has flopped, some reports made using proprietary web tools were lost by the Council while frustrated residents – seeking information through Freedom of Information requests -frequently do not attract answers within legal target times.

But the main concern will be the implications for residents if the Council and its officials hide behind an electronic defensive barricade.

The plan will mean more outsourcing and local jobs will be lost as techno bureaucrats take over.

Public services will become DIY as residents are forced to fill in the gaps left by a retreating public sector.

………..and the march of more CCTV surveillance will continue in the background!

Complaints about the York Council continue at high level

The Council have belatedly published answers to questions posed at its meeting in December. One of the questions tabled asked about complaint levels towards the end of last year and also sought information about the source of service reports.

Concerns had been raised about whether some web generated reports had found their way into the system.

The number of complaints received by the Authority is reported as

Complaints	Jun – Nov 2013
Stage 1	511
Stage 2	126
Stage 3	2
Total	639

Stage 3 complaints are the most serious. The classification means that the complainant remains dissatisfied with the response provided by the Council

The overall number of contacts with the Council (by channel) are:

	April	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Total
Total telephone calls 2012	23980	23525	22654	22654	22373	23938	140851
Total footfall 2012	5775	6167	5706	6456	5997	6427	36528
Total Emails 2012	3716	2969	3232	4570	4134	3413	22034
“do it on line” calls 2012	1230	709	1101	1606	1291	1841	7778
*Total telephone calls 2013*	*33587*	*29971*	*26320*	*34132*	*26385*	*32990*	*183385*
*Total footfall 2013*	*10415*	*9757*	*8061*	*10123*	*10259*	*12226*	*60841*
*Total Emails 2013*	*7088*	*5199*	*4474*	*5823*	*4825*	*4697*	*32106*
*“do it on line” calls 2013*	*755*	*634*	*934*	*1667*	*1471*	*2387*	*7848*

“Smarter York” App 2013 – 200 reports.

So the number of reports of public service failings being made by York residents to the Council continues to grow.

The much vaunted Smarter York mobile phone “app” has proved to be a flop. The “app” was under-developed when launched and is very limited in its scope when compared to commercial alternatives like “My Council”.

The costs of dealing with contacts made by residents are much higher than were expected when the Council moved to its new HQ.

They bring further into question the wisdom of the decision by Labour Councillors to close down local branch offices in sub-urbs like Acomb.

So the Council risks an adverse Ombudsman enquiry – with all that implies in terms of handling costs – simply because it took the metaphorical “phone off the hook”!

The York Council has said it will spend £10 million over the next 5 years on IT equipment. Their intention is to force residents to use electronic communications to communicate with the Council.

Complaints

Jun – Nov 2013

Stage 1

511

Stage 2

126

Stage 3

2

Total

639