20 October (Part 1) - The Finance Scrutiny meeting. Complaints officially down but maybe they are not
Labour Leader Stefano Borella kicked off proceedings with a question about the
Customer Experience Strategy. “What sort of savings are we expecting to make?”
Cabinet Member David Leaf said “that was difficult to quantify in terms of
pounds, shillings and pence” but there would be performance improvements.
Councillor Borella noted that only 5% of survey respondents were black compared
to 12% of Bexley’s population.
Councillor Howard Jackson (Conservative, Barnehurst) was pleased to see that overall complaint numbers are
going down. Maybe that has something to do with @tonyofsidcup being advised that
some of his complaints would not be recorded as complaints. How common is that?
Councillor Jackson asked what might be driving the reduction and the answer came close to
confirming @tony’s experience. The new procedure is that if the initial
complaint can be resolved within two days it is not sent forward to the
responsible team for a more lengthy investigation. Some complaints are judged to
be service requests and are not included in complaint statistics. Additionally the Complaints
section of the website has been redesigned so that some are redirected to the
Reporting section. From next April the two day period allowed to acknowledge a
complaint will be extended to five days. “Complaints that do not need to go through the full process, won’t.”
The meeting moved from the Experience Strategy to the People Strategy and the
first comment came from Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) and it was about staff absences.
She was told that the numbers had not dropped but they were never particularly
high when compared to other boroughs but stress and anxiety was a big
contributor to the numbers. All managers are to be given mental health awareness training.
It was not clear how many had attended the suicide prevention programme.
Councillor Larry Ferguson (Labour, Thamesmead East) asked for the numbers
relating to staff bullying and similar. He was informed that the Directorate
that scored particularly badly (Adults’ Social Services) in
the
previous survey had received special attention but few of the staff in it came forward this time.
David Leaf gave his Cabinet Member update which he uncharacteristically said
would be a short one. Not unreasonably he warned of the likely adverse impact of
another Labour Government budget on 26th November and he is already hampered by
the lack of information on the Household Support Fund which is to be renamed the
Household Resilience Fund. With a tribute to Margaret Thatcher born one hundred
years ago, that was about it from the usually voluble David. Councillor Borella
said he hated what she did but was thankful that she spurred his interest in
politics. He speculated that by November, Councillor Leaf would be Leader of the
Council and if so would he continue to look after Finance. Answer came there none.