Agenda item

To consider the annual report which provides an overview of the feedback received by the Council in 2024/25 and how the Council has acted on the feedback to drive improvements.

Cllr Seema Chandwani, Cabinet Member for Resident Services & Tackling Inequality, introduced the report for this item. She acknowledged the high number of complaints recorded in the report, but reminded the Committee that the figures could not be easily compared with other Councils, for example if they had lower levels of housing stock compared to Haringey. Her main focus was on the content of the complaints. She also noted that some complaints received sometimes included factors which were not in the control of the Council.

Kirsten Webb, Feedback & Resolutions Manager, informed the Committee that the report provided a comprehensive summary of positive and negative feedback received by the Council between April 2024 and March 2025. It also reflected how resident feedback had driven service improvement and provided details of progress in specific areas. In Housing, there had been a high compliance rate of 99% for completion of orders issued by the Housing Ombudsman by the target date. However, there had been a significant rise in the number of Stage 2 escalations across the Council, with a 44% rise compared to the previous year. The placed greater pressure on Council resources as these cases tended to be more complex and time-intensive. Of the determinations made by the Housing Ombudsman, a higher rate of maladministration was attributed to Haringey Council when compared with the national average. In response to this, the Council was investing in additional staffing, a new case management system and the strengthening of internal monitoring.

Cllr Chandwani, Kirsten Webb and other officers then responded to questions from the Committee:

• Cllr White expressed concern about the deterioration over the last five years in the number of cases responded to on time. He asked if the Complaints team had the resources to deal with the volume of cases received. Cllr Chandwani highlighted specific changes such as the new case management system which would streamline the working of the team and ensure quicker responses. She also highlighted the emphasis on using complaints to inform improvements rather than adopting a defensive stance. Claire McCarthy, Director of Strategy, Communications & Collaboration, agreed that the new case management system would help with managing demand, including by reducing the amount of manual input required and freeing up more time to work with services on driving improvements.

• Cllr White asked what was going wrong with the Stage 1 complaints that was leading to so many cases reaching Stage 2. Claire McCarthy noted that some additional staff resources had been secured to deal with the increase in Stage 2 cases. She also reiterated the need to reduce defensiveness and to acknowledge mistakes at an earlier stage which would help to prevent the unnecessary escalation of complaints.
• Cllr Connor referred to the annual review letter from the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman in July which stated that the Council’s timely compliance with recommendations remained poor, as it had the year before. She expressed concerns about the generally poor trajectory of performance in this area and noted that, according to the report, the Council would be developing a refreshed improvement plan to address these concerns. Cllr Chandwani accepted these concerns and said that her focus was on changing the way the team was working and to free up and increase resources available to deal with cases. In relation to Adult Social Care, Jo Baty, Director of Adult Social Services, emphasised the need for cultural change, including addressing the culture of defensiveness, a change in tone, including more compassion in responses and reducing the over-reliance on emails. She added that there had been some improvement in the last quarter of last year due to the establishment of a lead coordinator responding to cases within the service. She felt that a good start had been made but acknowledged that there was a lot further to go. In relation to the improvement plan, Claire McCarthy said that this involved targeted work with particular services in the Council to deal with root causes. She added that the Committee could be updated on this in future as this piece of work developed. (ACTION)
• Cllr Gunes welcomed the positive areas in the report including feedback about individual staff members. She noted that housing-related concerns always formed the majority of complaints and Councillor casework and that drastic improvements were needed. Cllr White noted that no-one from the Housing Department had been available to attend the meeting. Cllr Chandwani acknowledged that there was an issue with the state of housing and the age of some estates in the Borough which were a major cause of complaints and needed investment. She described some initiatives such as a weekly ‘repair surgery’ on the Broadwater Farm estate which reduced the need for residents to contact the Council by phone. Kirsten Webb commented that the issues with the housing stock could be complex, such as tracing leaks for example, which impacted on multiple residents and also required follow-up work. The team was now working on defining those type of complaints at the triage stage so that the service was clear about what it needed to respond to. The new case management system was better able to track future commitments made in response to complaints so that these were implemented. The Housing team had also been working on greater engagement with residents on Stage 1 complaints to increase resolutions and prevent complaints from escalating.
• Asked by Cllr Gunes whether ‘repair surgeries’ would be implemented on other estates, Cllr Chandwani acknowledged that something different had been attempted on the Broadwater Farm but that, if this model was working, this could be done elsewhere. She was aware that this had been tried as one-off events in other estates but was not aware of any that took place on a weekly basis. Cllr Connor proposed a recommendation from the Committee that the Housing team look into wider implementation of regular ‘repair surgeries’ on housing estates. (ACTION)
• While accepting the need for an honest approach and a less defensive culture, Cllr Small commented that a new approach of acknowledging mistakes needed to guard against becoming tolerant of maladministration. He also requested clarification on the responsibility for delayed responses between the complaints team and the service itself. Cllr Chandwani responded that there was a difference between accepting maladministration and creating a culture where people could learn and not feel defensive when mistakes had been made.  Irrespective of the scale of a complaint, it was important to the resident to be properly heard and for action to then be taken. However, sometimes circumstances, such as a lack of resources or a lack of supervision could lead to a poor response. This was why unlocking resources by streamlining administrative tasks was so important. Claire McCarthy noted that there were different complaints processes for different services and could provide some additional written information to the Committee about these processes. (ACTION) She also suggested that the Scrutiny Panels could do a more detailed piece of scrutiny on specific service complaints procedures. (ACTION) Cllr White proposed that the quality control of responses to complaints should sit with complaints team with the appropriate resource allocated to enable this. Claire McCarthy said that realistically this would be a significant journey in terms of resources and being able to perform quality controls for over 4,000 complaints per year. Cllr Connor proposed that Service Directors should have oversight of complaints for their service area. Cllr Lawton expressed concerns about responsibilities for oversight being overcomplicated and split between different areas. Cllr Chandwani acknowledged that there was a need to bridge the skills of the complaints team, for example in terms of the approach to complaints responses, with the specialist knowledge of the service teams. Kirsten Webb cited the partnership with Adult Social Care as an example of effective collaboration with subject matter experts in the service team and a level of resilience in the feedback team.
• Referring to the graph on page 77 of the agenda pack, Cllr Lawton requested an explanation of the significant fall in the percentage of Member Enquiries responded to on time with a rate of 64% in 2024/25 against a corporate target of 95%. Cllr Chandwani agreed with these concerns from her perspective as a Ward Councillor who submitted regular Member Enquiries requests. She spoke about the volume of Member Enquiries and how it could sometimes be easier, for example in an area like Broadwater Farm, for Ward Councillors and housing officers to meet with residents on a monthly basis to discuss issues of common concern (e.g. the district heating network). However, she acknowledged that some Member Enquiries related to individual casework and that the rise in Member Enquiries pressures coincided with the rise in complaints.
• Referring to the graph on page 86 of the agenda pack, Cllr Lawton expressed concerns about the very low rates of Stage 1 responses sent on time in 2024/25 in the SEND service. Ann Graham, Corporate Director of Children’s Services, explained that the reasons for the timeliness of responses was partly to do with the issues that had already been discussed, but also due to the complex nature of the complaints received in this service area. These complaints could sometimes relate to partner agencies, but Children’s Services would still try to respond and be as helpful as possible. As these responses would often involve correspondence with other agencies, this often led to delays. However, Children’s Services would often still be working with the family in the meantime and trying to resolve the issue.
• Cllr Connor referred to Table L on page 87 of the agenda pack which recorded 46 responses to statutory children’s complaints compared to 28 the previous year with a low percentage of responses sent on time. Kirsten Webb said that triaging over statutory complaints had been more effective but reiterated that the complexity of the cases could mean that meeting the statutory deadlines was very challenging.
• Referring to page 69 of the agenda pack, Cllr Small noted the significant increase in the number of Stage 1 complaints in recent years and asked what impact this was having on the Stage 2 workload the following year and the timeliness of responses. Claire McCarthy said that there was no data to evidence this as the relationship between Stage 1 and Stage 2 was not always straightforward, but she acknowledged that this may be the case.
• Referring to page 61 of the agenda pack, Cllr Small requested further details on the benefits of the monthly performance reviews with the Housing Services Leadership Team. Kirsten Webb explained that these meetings previously occurred on a quarterly basis but it was recognised that a monthly meeting may be more valuable. She added that this forum was particularly useful to discuss challenges with timeliness, quality and maladministration findings and to understand some of the technical difficulties that the Housing team faced in responding.